In the summer of 1957 Derrick Greaves helped open the exhibition Looking at People at the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, organised by Paul Hogarth with Soviet funding. Greaves, Hogarth and Ruskin Spear cut the ribbon.
Other artists with works on show were Carel Weight, Edward Ardizzone, the printmaker Alistair Grant and the sculptors Betty Rea and George Fullard.
Greaves’s large figurative paintings were disliked by Soviet officials, while Greaves in turn was startled by the Russian audience’s strong but varied reactions. He was also captivated by the beauty and scale of the icons he saw in the city’s museums. The British security services took a keen interest in Looking at People and Greaves’s participation earned him a security services file.
