Even so, it is well-composed and technically accomplished. Every detail works towards producing the desired effect – or would do if we didn’t know better about its main subject.
On the whole, I prefer socialist realism to Nazi art. I prefer both to most art produced in the democracies since about 1910. I’ve spent some very happy afternoons shuffling about Bratislava and looking at now neglected public art. There is a fine mosaic in the main railway station, and some good paintings in the central post office. There is even a fine statue – cast in concrete! – of some unmemorable apparatchik. It’s in the middle of a housing estate close by Ruzinov.
The best thing to do in a place like Bratislava is to keep looking up at the first and second floor of buildings in the centre. You will see things the natives stopped noticing many years ago.