"Fascism Is Advancing"

"In my dream I saw a creature, his eyes like the barrels of a gun. I called the painting 'Fascism Is Advancing."

The above quote, describing the Yevgeni Lysenko's conception of the painting (alternately called "The Bull"),  is taken from the 2010 documentary “The Desert of Forbidden Art.”

The film canonizes the life of Igor Savitsky, without whose noble actions over 40,000 avante gaurde works of art would undoubtfully have been destroyed, including Lysenko's "Fascism Is Advancing." In 1966, he founded the  Karakalpakstan State Museum of Art or the Nuko Museum where he could "safely" house those works he managed to preserve. During an  routine inspection of the museum by party officials, the ambiguous political theme of Lysenko's painting came into question and the Savitsky was ordered to remove it from the wall. He did so without argument and, as soon as the officials were off the premises, returned the paintig to the place it had just been hanging.