Bidspirit auction | ABEL RUDOLF: (1903-1971)

ABEL RUDOLF: (1903-1971) - ABEL RUDOLF: (1903-1971) William Genrikhovich Fisher. Soviet intelligence officer and one of the most celebrated spies of the Cold War. Operating undercover in the United States from 1948, Abel was arrested by the FBI in 1957 and convicted of espionage. Sentenced to thirty years' imprisonment, he was famously exchanged for the captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers on the Glienicke Bridge in 1962, an episode later dramatised in Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies (2015). A small printed illustration (approximately 12.5 x 8 cm) depicting a house in the snowy countryside with a large number of fir trees in the background and a further, solitary tree in the foreground. Signed in ink by Abel to the lower right corner of the image. About EX Abel possessed considerable artistic ability and had worked as a draughtsman in his youth. Art later provided part of his cover whilst operating as a Soviet agent in New York, where he maintained a Brooklyn studio as an artist and photographer under the identity Emil Goldfus. He continued to paint and draw during his imprisonment in the United States, producing portraits and views from his cell at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.