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Travelling through many cities and republics of the former USSR for business reasons in the 1970s, Friedemann Stöckert found out and became acquainted with an unexpected and astonishing art scene in this part of the world. His interest awoke and he wanted to know more and study more thoroughly these works of art. Under great difficulties he managed to find the artists, visited a considerable number of studios and slowly started to acquire some pieces. Thus he could build up an amazing collection of more than 300 paintings and graphic works.
Stöckert’s collection is mainly focused on pictures with the typical phenomena of the 1970s—its symbolic and mythological trends and its new aestheticism. The collector’s personal taste and appreciation of this new waves were the only criteria for selection. This gives us now an unexpected broad insight into a unique period of Sowiet art history.
These new phenomena, which were common for the art in almost all Sowiet republics where the political upheaval had gradually started, have not yet been analysed systematically. In Friedemann Stöckert’s collection this development can be perceived instantaneously.
It is almost paradox that a western European art connoisseur, whose view was neither distorted by the hierarchies of the established art science nor by the refinements of post modern critics, saw the trends and phenomena of this period. The impartiality of the collector is now a blessing for the understanding of Sowiet art in the 1970s.
