Description
Literary Nonfiction. Art. Edited by Leonid Lerman, Polina Gluzman, Anatoly Gluzman."Arnold Sharrad was born in 1946 in Odessa, Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union. He left for the United States in 1974, and died in Brooklyn, New York, in 2015. These are the dates of an artist who—like thousands of others from the Soviet Union—left home simply to pursue art in an environment free from the unrelenting control of the Soviet system that brooked no departure from official state style and its suffocating, conformist, Socialist Realist message. There is nothing simple about what they did and there is something heroic about their willingness to leave friends, family, and familiar places behind in order to be free. America welcomed artists who sought refuge hoping to practice their art and to create a new life. Some of them found their way; others struggled. Arnold Sharrad was one of the latter ... What greater tribute can we offer to the artist than a sincere thank you for helping us to see the beauty in the world and the people around us, people and places we might otherwise have never noticed, appreciated, or understood. Therein lies the ultimate measure of Arnold Sharrad’s successful life as an artist."—Dr. Michael Mezzatesta