Trotski II, 2019

Jean-Marie Gitard (Mr Strange)  

Trotski II is an artwork by Jean-Marie Gitard, also known as , offering a powerful reflection on history, ideology, and the gradual disappearance of major political figures from collective memory.

The scene depicts a man seen from behind, dressed in a dark suit and wearing a bowler hat, holding a suitcase at his side. He stands motionless facing a raw, almost bare wall on which the name “Trotski” is written like a piece of graffiti. The identity of the figure remains deliberately ambiguous: he may represent Trotsky himself, an anonymous individual, or a symbolic embodiment of the political exile.

The choice of posture—with the figure’s back turned to the viewer—reinforces a sense of distance, erasure, and abandonment. The suitcase evokes exile, forced flight, and perpetual displacement, themes inseparable from the fate of Leon Trotsky and, more broadly, from all figures crushed by the course of history. The rough, weathered wall becomes the fragile support of memory, reduced to a single name hastily inscribed.

Through a restrained, desaturated color palette, Mr Strange establishes a silent, melancholic atmosphere. The artwork oscillates between photography, staged composition, and conceptual art, blurring temporal and narrative boundaries.

With Trotski II, the artist questions the persistence of ideologies, the way revolutionary heroes become ghosts, and how history is sometimes reduced to fleeting traces on a wall. The work invites the viewer to reflect on what remains of great utopias once the turmoil has faded: a name, a silhouette, and the weight of silence.