Russian avant-garde

Abstract art. Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII (Première abstraction), 1913[1]
Russian Futurism. Natalia Goncharova, Cyclist, 1913
Rayonism. Mikhail Larionov, The Glass, 1912
Suprematism. Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915
Proletkult. El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919
Constructivism. Vladimir Tatlin, Tatlin's Tower, 1919
Constructivism. Alexander Rodchenko, chess table design, 1925
Constructivism. Ilya Golosov, Zuev Club, 1926

The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of avant-garde modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, approximately from 1890 to 1930—although some have placed its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960. The term covers many separate, but inextricably related, art movements that flourished at the time; including Suprematism, Constructivism, Russian Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, Zaum, Imaginism, and Neo-primitivism.[2][3][4][5] In Ukraine, many of the artists who were born, grew up or were active in what is now Belarus and Ukraine (including Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandra Ekster, Vladimir Tatlin, David Burliuk, Alexander Archipenko), are also classified in the Ukrainian avant-garde.[6]

The Russian avant-garde reached its creative and popular height in the period between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and 1932, at which point the ideas of the avant-garde clashed with the newly emerged state-sponsored direction of Socialist Realism.[7]

Influence

The Russian avant-garde had a broad impact on twentieth-century abstraction, design, typography, architecture, film, and later sculptural practices. In the field of geometric abstraction, Kazimir Malevich's Suprematism and Vladimir Tatlin's counter-reliefs helped establish a vocabulary of elemental forms, non-objective composition, and material construction. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has described Tatlin's "culture of materials" as one of the sources of Constructivism, while identifying El Lissitzky as a transmitter of Constructivist principles to Germany, where they were later embodied in the teaching of the Bauhaus.[8]

Constructivist ideas circulated internationally through exhibitions, journals, graphic works, and the movement of artists between the Soviet Union and Western Europe. The Museum of Modern Art has noted that Constructivist ideas gained international influence through the Russian exhibition at the Van Diemen Gallery in Berlin in 1922, the Congress of International Progressive Artists in Düsseldorf, and exhibition projects and graphic works by Lissitzky, often made in collaboration with Western European artists. These ideas were later reflected in Bauhaus pedagogy, mid-century sculpture, and Minimal art, including the work of artists such as Sol LeWitt, Mel Bochner, Dorothea Rockburne, Robert Ryman, and Fred Sandback.[9]

The movement also had an important legacy in graphic design, typography, photography, photomontage, book design, textiles, cinema posters, and mass-circulation visual culture. Avant-garde artists including Alexander Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Varvara Stepanova, Liubov Popova, Gustav Klutsis, and the Stenberg brothers transferred abstract composition into practical and reproducible media. MoMA has described the work of Popova, Stepanova, Rodchenko, Malevich's pupils, and the Stenberg brothers as laying the foundations of modern industrial and graphic design, with an important impact on European typography and layout during the 1920s.[9]

The architectural and pedagogical influence of the Russian avant-garde was especially visible in exchanges between VKhUTEMAS and the Bauhaus. MoMA research on interwar architectural magazines describes the Bauhaus and VKhUTEMAS as parallel institutions of radical pedagogy that shared an interest in the integration of artistic work as construction. It also notes the circulation of publications, exhibitions, correspondence, student exchanges, and guest lectures between Germany and the Soviet Union during the 1920s.[10]

In later art criticism and design history, the Russian avant-garde has continued to serve as a reference point for geometric, functional, and systems-based approaches to art. Contemporary art commentary has also discussed Configuratism in connection with Rodchenko's Constructivist work, framing it within a later reception of Russian avant-garde geometry and functional modernist aesthetics.[11]

Important collections

Exhibition in Chemnitz 2016/17

Under the rubric "Revolutionary! Russian Avant-Garde from the Vladimir Tsarenkov Collection", the Chemnitz Art Collections displayed 400 loans from 110 Russian avant-garde artists from the years 1907 to around 1930 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Russian October Revolution.[12]

Artists and designers

Notable figures from this era include:

Journals

Filmmakers

Writers

Theatre directors

Architects

Preserving Russian avant-garde architecture has become a real concern for historians, politicians and architects. In 2007, MoMA in New York City, devoted an exhibition to Soviet avant-garde architecture in the postrevolutionary period, featuring photographs by Richard Pare.[13]

Composers

Many Russian composers that were interested in avant-garde music became members of the Association for Contemporary Music which was headed by Roslavets.

See also

References

  1. ^ Wassily Kandinsky, Untitled (study for Composition VII, Première abstraction), watercolor, 1913, MNAM, Centre Pompidou
  2. ^ Hatherley, Owen (2011-11-04). "The constructivists and the Russian revolution in art and achitecture". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-12-13.
  3. ^ "Cubo-Futurism | art movement". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-12-13.
  4. ^ Douglas, Charlotte (1975). "The New Russian Art and Italian Futurism". Art Journal. 34 (3): 229–239. doi:10.2307/775994. ISSN 0004-3249. JSTOR 775994.
  5. ^ "A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2019-12-13.
  6. ^ "Ukrainian Avant Garde". Ukrainian Art Library. 26 January 2017.
  7. ^ Groys, Boris (2019-12-31), "3. The Birth of Socialist Realism from the Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde", The Russian Avant-Garde and Radical Modernism, Academic Studies Press, pp. 250–276, doi:10.1515/9781618111425-010, ISBN 978-1-61811-142-5, S2CID 240605358{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  8. ^ Dabrowski, Magdalena (October 2004). "Geometric Abstraction". Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 25 April 2026.
  9. ^ a b Dabrowski, Magdalena (1978). "Revolution: Russian Avant-Garde, 1912–1930" (PDF). The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 25 April 2026.
  10. ^ Forbes, Meghan (26 September 2018). "Magazines As Sites of Intersection: A New Look at the Bauhaus and VKhUTEMAS". post. The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 25 April 2026.
  11. ^ "Alexander Rodchenko". HENI News. Retrieved 25 April 2026.
  12. ^ Revolutionär! Russische Avantgarde aus der Sammlung Vladimir Tsarenkov. Ausstellung in den Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, 11. Dezember 2016 bis zum 19. März 2017.
  13. ^ "Lost Vanguard: Soviet Modernist Architecture, 1922–32". MoMA. 2007. Retrieved 1 August 2019.

Further reading

  • Friedman, Julia. Beyond Symbolism and Surrealism: Alexei Remizov's Synthetic Art, Northwestern University Press, 2010. ISBN 0-8101-2617-6 (Trade Cloth)
  • Nakov, Andrei. Avant Garde Russe. England: Art Data. 1986.
  • Kovalenko, G.F. (ed.) The Russian Avant-Garde of 1910–1920 and Issues of Expressionism. Moscow: Nauka, 2003.
  • Rowell, M. and Zander Rudenstine A. Art of the Avant-Garde in Russia: Selections from the George Costakis Collection. New York: The Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum, 1981.
  • Shishanov V.A. Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art: a history of creation and a collection. 1918–1941. – Minsk: Medisont, 2007. – 144 p.[1]
  • “Encyclopedia of Russian Avangard. Fine Art. Architecture Vol.1 A-K, Vol.2 L-Z Biography”; Rakitin V.I., Sarab’yanov A.D., Moscow, 2013
  • Surviving Suprematism: Lazar Khidekel. Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley CA, 2004
  • Lazar Khidekel and Suprematism. Prestel, 2014 (Regina Khidekel, with contributions by Constantin Boym, Magdalena Dabrowski, Charlotte Douglas, Tatyana Goryacheva, Irina Karasik, Boris Kirikov and Margarita Shtiglits, and Alla Rosenfeld)
  • Tedman, Gary. Soviet Avant Garde Aesthetics, chapter from Aesthetics & Alienation. pp 203–229. 2012. Zero Books. ISBN 978-1-78099-301-0
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