Communist Artform that Replaced Russian Religious Icons Fading

ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 10, 2011

RUSSIA - Vladimir Buldakov comes from Palekh, a 700-year-old Russian village where a church's lavender onion-domes overlook snow-clad houses, a frozen river and a distant birch forest. The town is famous for its beauty, but the rare outsiders who visit come for the varnished boxes that bear its name. Now, the unique art form, which emerged in the 1920s after the atheist Bolsheviks approved a new medium in which masters of religious icon paintings could use their talents, is struggling to find a reason to exist in capitalist society. [link]