Collective Farm Girl or Dancer? Isadora Duncan and the Sculpture of Vera Mukhina

Abstract

Vera Mukhina’s 1937 sculpture The Worker and the Collective Farm Girl is a famous work of Soviet-era art in the Russian Federation. In this article, I argue that the dancer Isadora Duncan inspired elements of the artwork. After describing the statue, I relate its physicality to Duncan’s style of dancing. From there, I examine Duncan’s motivations for choosing to reside in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and those of the Soviet government for inviting her. I proceed to explore Duncan’s influence on Soviet Physical Culture and the New Soviet Man and Woman. Finally, I interpret the statue’s motifs in the context of Mukhina’s larger body of work, tracing how the sculptor’s and the dancer’s lives intersected over a fifteen-year period.