We’ve been scratching like animals for a long time now…”: specificity of the artistic language of Pavel Zaltsman

Abstract

Pavel Zaltsman (1912–1985) – painter and fi artist, writer and poet. The article presents the artistic features of Pavel Zaltsman’s works. For a long time, Zaltsman was known as an artist, a student of the founder of analytical art, Pavel Filonov. The paintings of Pavel Zaltsman found their audience during his lifetime, but were inaccessible to the general public. Zaltsman’s literary works (poems and the novel “Puppies”) became known and published only in 2011–2012. Researchers began to discover him recently, and many aspects of his work remain poorly understood. The acquaintance of researchers with the literary work of Pavel Zaltsman set the researchers the task of determining the features of his innovative writing. One of the aspects that attracts researchers in Zaltsman’s work is the problem of alternative expression in the conditions of Soviet culture. The literary works of Pavel Zaltsman reveal principles that make it possible to describe culture in the USSR in the 1930s–1950s in a new way.