The Poignant Gulag Art by Stalin’s Doomed Meteorologist
February 28th, 2018Via: Atlas Obscura:
AN ARCTIC FOX, A HEN, wild berries, a reindeer, a single candle glowing in the darkness, glaciers floating at sea, and an aurora borealis. These are some of the subjects of delicate, precise illustrations created by a man imprisoned in a Soviet gulag during the 1930s. The man’s drawings and letters, teeming with melancholy, survive today thanks to his daughter who conserved and published them. His story, as told in Olivier Rolin’s new biography, Stalin’s Meteorologist: One Man’s Untold Story of Love, Life, and Death, is one of tragedy, but also of resilience—the kind that allows a sensitivity and love for the wonders and mysteries of nature to survive the most oppressive, cruel circumstances.
