Leon Trotsky  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Tumblr Wikisource YouTube Shop Featured: A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933)

Leon Trotsky (November 7, 1879 - August 21, 1940).

Trotsky in art

Trotsky was admired by Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, the husband of Frida Kahlo. Rivera twice painted Trotsky's face as part of a montage of Communist figures, in Communist Unity Panel (1933) and again in Man at the Crossroads (1933). After the destruction of the latter, it was re-created as Man, Controller of the Universe (1934).

Trotsky's death was dramatized in the 1972 film The Assassination of Trotsky, directed by Joseph Losey and starring Richard Burton as Trotsky. It was also the subject of a 1993 short play, "Variations on the Death of Trotsky", written by David Ives. In the 2002 film Frida, Trotsky was portrayed by Geoffrey Rush.

The Character "Snowball" in George Orwell's novella, Animal Farm, is clearly based on Trotsky. In Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Party's archenemy, Emmanuel Goldstein, resembles Trotsky.