The female figure in the center of the painting “Allegory” by Leopold Survage resembles a transparent vessel with a burning flame and springy flower heads blossoming inside. The figure is in the pose of a caryatid holding pieces of the heavenly vault with images of stars and flying gulls in her huge hands. Her hands, forming a cup, embrace the landscape with its sheaves and new buildings with smoking chimney shafts. 

To the left and right of the figure, we can see conventional characters: a conqueror shaking his fist and a cubical horse. These figures could be the influence of Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica”. 

Survage’s painting is dedicated to the USSR, which had won the Great Patriotic War. The bright colors and complicated allegories that combine the experience of the Medieval Ages, popular prints, and avant-garde became a part of Survage’s artistic language, encapsulating the experience of interacting with the company of Baroness Helene Oettingen – one of the centers of the School of Paris. This allegory conveys the anti-war mood and the somewhat naive pathos of creative construction, expressed using straightforward didactic means.