Leon Trotsky - Trotsky in Art

Trotsky in Art

• In Mexico in the late 1930s Trotsky met Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and André Breton who in 1938 wrote Pour un art révolutionnaire indépendant (For an Independent Revolution in Art) and as the leader of Surrealism Breton befriended Trotsky. After Trotsky's death in 1940, Breton denounced him for not successfully bringing forth the Revolution promised in Breton's manifesto.
• Trotsky was admired by Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, husband of Frida Kahlo. Rivera twice painted Trotsky's face as part of a montage of Communist figures, in Communist Unity Panel (1933) and again in Man at the Crossroads (1933). After the destruction of the latter, it was re-created as Man, Controller of the Universe (1934).
• In 1969 German playwright Peter Weiss wrote the play Trotski Im Exil (Trotsky In Exile).
• Trotsky's death was dramatized in the 1972 film The Assassination of Trotsky, directed by Joseph Losey and starring Richard Burton as Trotsky. It was also the subject of a 1993 short play, Variations on the Death of Trotsky, written by David Ives. In the 2002 film Frida, Trotsky was portrayed by Geoffrey Rush.
• Trotsky is mentioned briefly in the 1977 song "No More Heroes" by English punk band The Stranglers. His assassination is described as getting "an ice-pick that made his ears burn"
• The characters of Snowball and Emmanuel Goldstein in George Orwell's novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four respectively, are based on Trotsky.
• Trotsky is a well regarded political figure within Bolano's The Savage Detectives.
• Trotsky is a major character in Robert Bolt's play State of Revolution, which deals with the Russian Revolution and its aftermath.
• Lillian Pollak, who knew Trotsky in Mexico City in the late 1930s, includes him as a character in The Sweetest Dream: Loves, Lies, & Assassination, a semi-autobiographical novel from 2008 about her life as a radical in New York City in the 1920s-40s.
• A Spanish language documentary, El Asesinato de Trotsky (The Murder of Trotsky) was co-produced in 2006 by The History Channel and Anima Films, and directed by Argentinian director Matías Gueilburt.
• Third-wave ska band Catch-22 released a concept album in 2006 centered around the life of Trotsky, entitled Permanent Revolution.
• In the 2009 novel The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, the protagonist, Harrison William Shepherd, works as a secretary to the exiled Leon Trotsky in Mexico.
• In the 2010 film The Trotsky, Jay Baruchel plays Leon Bronshtein, a high school student who believes himself to be a reincarnation of Trotsky and attempts to lead a revolution.
• In the 2011 documentary film Marx Reloaded, Trotsky meets Karl Marx in an animated cartoon parody of the 1999 science fiction-action film The Matrix. Although the scene is fictional, Trotsky is credited and depicted on the film's movie poster alongside contemporary philosophers including Slavoj Žižek.
• One of the three storylines in the 1982 novel The End of the World News: An Entertainment by Anthony Burgess follows Leon Trotsky on a journey to New York City shortly before the Russian Revolution of 1917. This story is written as the libretto of an Off-Broadway musical.
• He was portrayed by Brian Cox in the 1971 film Nicholas and Alexandra.
• He was portrayed too by Friedrich G. Beckhaus in the five parts of the West German television play Bürgerkrieg in Rußland from 1967, directed by Wolfgang Schleif.
• A character in the Monty Python episode "The Cycling Tour" is transformed into Trotsky and Eartha Kitt simultaneously.
• Trotsky's arrival in France, and his departure, punctuate the main plot of the 1974 French film Stavisky.