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Pervaded by magic and mysticism, Bulgakov’s masterpiece was a far cry from the weary “socialist realism” mandated by an officially atheistic state.

Mr. Rubinstein was considered one of the founders of the Russian conceptualism movement, an avant-garde fusion of art and prose that thumbed its nose at the restrictions of the Socialist Realism that predominated in the 1970s and ’80s.

In the 1970s and 1980s, it used art in its many forms to subvert traditional Soviet era norms and critique the official doctrine of socialist realism - an ideology prominent during the Soviet Union that pushed the political agenda using art.

Zeng’s art is informed by socialist realism, a style he encountered growing up in Maoist China.

Their work ranges from performance art — “Art Belongs to People,” which debuted in Moscow in 1974, was recreated at the Zimmerli opening — to public opinion polls that gauge and depict the artistic preferences of mass audiences in Russia and the U.S. in their “People’s Choice” project, to monumental paintings of Stalin as part of their “Nostalgic Socialist Realism” series.