BORN in Riga to a hemp merchant and his wife, Vera Mukhina (1889-1953) was destined to become one of the most eminent Soviet sculptors.

She created many monuments and busts of Russian and Soviet artists and intellectuals, including of Maxim Gorky and of Pyotr Tchaikovsky; but her greatest work was her 24-meter monument The Worker and the Collective Farm Woman for the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Fair.

Mukhina was no stranger to Paris. After first studying art in Moscow with several artists including K Yuon, N Sinitsyna and I Maskov, in 1912 she set off for Paris, then the Mecca of contemporary art, where she studied for two years under the eminent sculptor Emile-Antoine Bourdelle.

But her heart remained in Russia and in the first years after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution she submitted designs for several sculpture competitions for Lenin’s plan for monumental propaganda.

She acknowledged that she learned much from the recent modernist innovations of “formalist art,” partly guided by one of its pioneers, her friend Lyubov Popova.

But, said Mukhina: “I became convinced that the essence and ‘spirit’ of a subject was what mattered most in art.”

In 1927 her imposing Peasant Woman commemorated the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution. Modelled in clay and cast in bronze, the 190-centimetre figure is taller than life size.

Bare feet confidently planted slightly apart, arms folded defiantly across her chest, she brooks no argument. No simpering, submissive tsarist peasant girl, she symbolises the proud new Soviet woman conscious of her important social value.

In 1935 by now in mid-career, Mukhina felt honoured to win the commission for a monumental sculpture to top Boris Iofan’s Soviet pavilion for the 1937 Paris World Fair.

And it was Iofan who decided the subject of worker and collective farm woman. Her intention was for “…the figures to express the young and forceful spirit of our country, to be light, rushing forward, full of movement and determination. They had to be joyous, yet powerful in their forward stride.”

Mukhina’s commitment to the social function of art and therefore to the importance of accessibility to the masses chimed with the recently formulated theory of socialist realism.

Yet her interpretation of realism was far from academic or backward-looking. Her brave decision to build the monument from stainless steel plates asserted its modernity.

Although already used by modernist architects, this enduring material was new to art; it broke with sculpture’s traditional methods and materials of carved stone or modelled clay cast in bronze.

This was a brilliant compromise between Mukhina’s desire to be of her times and yet to impart clear meanings to all regardless of their social and aesthetic backgrounds.

The process of construction was equally revolutionary — it was collective, collaborative and factory-made.

Working from a 1/15th scale model, the sculpture was built from massive wooden moulds by engineers and craftspeople in the factory of The Central Research Machine-Building Institute.

Mukhina remarked: “These moulds were truly gigantic: the cross-section of the arm at the shoulder served as an entrance for a whole crew of carpenters working inside the female torso.”

The steel plates were transported to Paris where a gigantic armature was built and a team of 20 Soviet fitters, welders, tinsmiths and four engineers assembled and supervised the sculpture on top of its 34-metre pedestal.

Mukhina recalled with pride: “The psychological impact of the figures silhouetted against the Paris sky once again proved the great power of Art. [sic caps] I shall never forget the sight of French workers stopping before the giant heads, which were still on the ground, and saluting them — for an artist’s greatest aspiration is to be understood.”

This may also have been inspired by the great respect with which many of the French working class regarded the young Soviet Union.

Once assembled the gigantic figures shone and glinted in sunlight or electric light against the changing Parisian skies.

The French organisers of the Paris exhibition deliberately confronted the Soviet and German pavilions across the main entrance to the Trocadero site, so symbolising the current political tensions created by Nazi belligerence.

My Parisian mother recalled a shudder of fear as she walked between them as a child.

Mukhina’s dynamic and defiant youthful figures proudly holding a hammer and a sickle outshone the gigantic ponderous swastika which topped Nazi Germany’s pavilion.

She continued to experiment with unusual materials by venturing into glass figures and modernist vases, and sculptures of eminent Soviet people, including Maxim Gorky.

But her most memorable work remains The Worker and the Collective Farm Woman. It has inspired many other works, especially in graphic design, and remains a testament of the enduring power of Soviet socialist realism at its best.

This is an abridged version of an article first published in the SCRSS Digest: scrss.org.uk