Thomas Sgovio (1916-1997) was a painter who spent many years in Soviet camps under false accusations, from which he came out as a convinced anti-communist who had seen everything and was completely disillusioned with life. His love of painting and ability to draw played a truly fundamental role in his fate - it was the only way he was able to move to the easier work of camp artist and stay alive. We will talk about the life and work of Thomas Sgovio in this article.
(Tsinga)
The artist's father Sergio Sgovio was an American communist and of Italian descent. However, his beliefs did not please the American authorities and Sgovio was deported from the country. He decided to settle in the USSR, where at the age of 19 years decided to move to his father and his son Thomas Sgovio. The young man was seriously interested in painting and expected to get a good art education in the USSR. But for some reason he was not accepted anywhere: perhaps, considered insufficiently reliable, and a long life in the U.S. positive recommendation Thomas did not add. So he had to work as an artist in Moscow newspapers and magazines, drawing various caricatures and drawings for pennies.
Self-disabled people “on an easy work
And 2 years later (1937) Sergio Sgovio was arrested on some far-fetched charges. Thomas realized that it was practically impossible for a political emigrant to live in the USSR, decided to move to the USA and applied to the embassy to get an American passport. It was a big mistake: immediately after leaving the embassy, he was arrested, sent to Lubyanka, and later to the infamous Taganskaya prison. A hastily formed “troika” decided his fate quickly: five years in a correctional labor camp, as he was recognized as a socially dangerous element. What a budding magazine artist could threaten the Soviet state, Thomas probably did not realize until the end of his life.
The black funnel and the Chekists
And then there was a trip across the country to Vladivostok. When the train left, the old men in the carriage, who had seen everything in their lives, wept. "It was absolutely unimaginable: 70 people were crying like babies, I will never forget this sight."
A month later, the train arrived in Vladivostok, and Sergio sailed on the ship Indigirka with other prisoners to the Kolyma camps.
Work in the summer
According to Thomas Sgovio's memoirs, there was no division between political and ordinary criminals. The ability to draw allowed Thomas to become a tattoo artist, he was not touched, but he could not count on something good. He worked at a lumberyard, and this hard labor was almost impossible for a boy who had not yet had time to become completely old. And together with a meager diet it led to exhaustion: the tall, broad-shouldered guy weighed only 50 kilograms.
In the barracks
But the guards decided to take pity on Thomas, though only for practical reasons: they needed a camp designer, so Thomas drew propaganda posters and wrote bravura slogans by day, and at night, when he was free to paint another convict with some tattoo.
Thomas drew propaganda posters and bravura slogans during the day, and at night, when he was free from the need to give another convict a tattoo, he drew for himself and for his soul, with the utmost honesty and sincerity, everything he saw in that camp.
Camera Quarter. Between 1963 and 1980 KP 1048
He had to stay in Kolyma until 1946, and then moved to the town of Alexandrov in the Vladimir region. But it was not possible to sit quietly in the Russian province: two years later Thomas was arrested again, and sent to the Krasnoyarsk region for eternal settlement. He had to work again at a lumber mill, and only in 1954 he moved to a relatively easy position as a checker in a movie theater.
Parasha
Soon the exile ended, and Thomas could move to Moscow, where he worked as an artist. But only after another 6 years, during the Khrushchev thaw, he was fully rehabilitated and had the opportunity to go to Italy, from where he moved to the United States. It was there that Sgovio published his famous memoirs, in which he described everything he had seen in the Kolyma camps and the monstrous mortality rate among the prisoners there.
Buy handmade goods or modern art you can on artAlebrio - is an international marketplace for people who want to create, sell, buy and collect unique items and art - buy the best with us artAlebrio.com.
By confirming your order you unconditionally accept these General Conditions of Sale
