I met Dora García, a Spanish artist who has spent several years exploring the life and work of Alexandra Kollontai, in late February at a Brooklyn art space called Amant, where her work on the Bolshevik thinker was on display, including an exhibition and two new films. Amant’s space, in the Bushwick neighborhood, is inviting, with a large outdoor garden featuring a large statue of a nude and exuberant woman. The name of the art space suits our subject; Kollontai wrote extensively on how communism could free women for better love, sex, romance, and comradeship.

Before I met García, I perused her exhibition, which explores Kollontai’s publishing history — through letters and various editions of her books — juxtaposed with photos and placards documenting left-feminist protest. I chatted briefly with Amant’s director and chief curator, Ruth Estévez, who told me, with some surprise, that this is the first time García has been exhibited in the United States. “She is such an important artist in Europe but not here,” Estévez emphasized attributing the difference to “perhaps the themes!”

Estévez is almost certainly right that the themes of García’s work — especially on Alexandra Kollontai — aren’t an obvious fit for the US art world, which has only sporadically discovered protest politics. The milieu has yet to embrace communism and is mostly bankrolled by millionaires and billionaires who wouldn’t take kindly to the idea.