“Dissident Art: The Etchings of Aleksandr Kalugin,” a Nov. 12 program in Bluffton University’s Musselman Library Reading Room, will celebrate the donation of five Kalugin works to the library. The 4 p.m. event is free and open to the public.
Donors of the etchings—which are exhibited on the library’s second floor—are Dr. James Satterwhite, a professor emeritus of history and political science, and his wife, Olwen Pritchard, who will speak during the program.
Pritchard will discuss Satterwhite’s and her friendship with Kalugin, an Estonian who studied with Russian artists and now lives in Moscow. A biographical piece on his website notes that he joined “the underground wave of nonconformist art” in the early 1970s, acquiring a Western audience. Following his participation in a controversial public art exhibition in 1974, Kalugin was arrested and, the biography continues, “incarcerated in over 30 hospitals, where authorities forcibly tried to cure him of his individual way of viewing the world. Under the influence of his older brother and his friends, Kalugin became a human rights activist.”
His association with Satterwhite and Pritchard dates to Satterwhite’s 1989 sabbatical in Warsaw, Poland. At that time, the professor went to the then-Soviet Union to work with the Moscow International Book Fair for Peace Church Publishers, a group of Mennonites, Brethren and Quakers. He became acquainted with Kalugin and, struck by the originality of his work—which often incorporates fantastic, carnival-like details in its complexity—purchased several prints. Satterwhite then visited the artist during subsequent trips to Moscow.
Also among the speakers at the Nov. 12 event will be university President Dr. James Harder; Dr. Perry Bush, a professor of history; and Philip Sugden, an assistant professor and chair of art at Bluffton, who will discuss the topic of dissident art.
