Vera Mukhina was an iconic 20th-century artist and the most famous female sculptor from the Soviet Union. Many know her as the artist behind “Worker and Kolkhoz Woman,” one of the century's most enduring symbols, but her creative path was much more complex than that. Mukhina herself was a complicated person: a semi-official sculptor and believer in the “new religion” (i.e. of the revolution), as well as a subtle artist who parted with illusions early on; a frosty maiden with expressionless eyes as well as a fragile woman who lived a dramatic life.