Dwelling House of Winnie-the-Pooh and more art by Aleksandr Savvič Brodskij & Ilya Utkin

(Gift Print, 1991)

In the decade prior to the fall of the Communist regime when there was no money to actually build anything in the Soviet Union, many young architects became conceptual artists. They intentionally designed unbuildable buildings. This movement was known as Paper Architecture. Sasha Brodsky and Ilya Utkin worked as a team, designing structures that commented on the absurdities of life in the Soviet Union. Brodsky and Utkin also made etchings together. When an exhibition on Soviet Art of the late 1980s was shown at the Des Moines Art Center, Print Club members decided to choose their annual gift print from Brodsky and Utkin’s works. This complex etching, complete with plans and elevations, imagines how Winnie-the-Pooh’s tree house might be in a large modern city.