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Art of Century Collection
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T
he Russian Avant-Garde was born at the turn of the twentieth century in pre-revolutionary
Russia. The intellectual and cultural turmoil had then reached a peak and provided fertile
soil for the formation of the movement. For many artists influenced by European art, the
movement represented a way of liberating themselves from the social and aesthetic constraints
of the past. It was these Avant-Garde artists who, through their immense creativity, gave birth to
abstract art, thereby elevating Russian culture to a modern level.
Such painters as Kandinsky, Malevich, Goncharova, Larionov, and Tatlin, to name but a few, had
a definitive impact on twentieth-century art.
A
C
Russian
Avant-Garde
Russian Avant-Garde
Abstract Expressionism
Evgueny Kovtun
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Text: Evgueny Kovtun
Translation: Nick Cowling and Marie-Noëllle Dumaz
Layout:
Baseline Co. Ltd.
127-129A Nguyen Hue
Fiditourist, 3rd floor
District 1, Ho Chi Minh-City
Vietnam
© Parkstone Press International, New York, USA
© Confidential Concepts, Worldwide, USA
Art © Nathan Altman/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Hans Arp Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Marc Chagall Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
Art © Alexander Deineka/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Art © Robert Falk/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Natalia Goncharova Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Wassily Kandinsky Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
Art © Pyotr Konchalovsky /Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Vladimir Kozlinsky Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Mikhail Larionov Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
Art © Vladimir Lebedev Estate/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Lasar Markowitsch Lissitzky Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
© Ivan Puni Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
Art © Alexander Rodchenko Estate/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Martiros Saryan, Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Nikolai Suetin Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Vladimir Tatlin Estate, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, USA/ ADAGP, Paris
© Yuri Annenkov
© Sergei Bulakovski
© David Burliuk
© Maria Ender
© Vera Ermolaeva
© Evguenija Evenbach
© Alexandra Exter
© Pavel Filonov
© Elena Guro
© Valentin Kurdov
© Nikolai Lapshin
© Aristarkh Lentulov
© Ilya Mashkov
© Mikhail Matiushin
© Alexander Matveïev
© Kuzma Petrov-Vodkine
© Bossilka Radonitch
© Alexandra Schekatikhina-Potoskaya
© Alexander Shevchenko
© Lyubov Silitch
© Pyotr Sokolov
© Sergei Tschechonin
© Lev Yudin
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder,
throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the
respective photographers. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright
ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification.
ISBN: 978-1-78042-793-5
2
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RUSSIAN
AVANT-GARDE
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- Contents I. Art in the First Years of the Revolution
7
II. Schools and Movements
39
Major Artists
103
Notes
194
Bibliography
196
Index
197
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I. Art in the First Years of the Revolution
‘Picasso, this is not the new art.’
At the beginning of the twentieth century Russian art found itself at the cutting edge of
the world’s artistic process. The decades dedicated to the renewal of pictorial art in
France were condensed into approximately fifteen years in Russia. The 1910s were
marked by the growing influence of Cubism, which in turn modified the ‘profile’ of
figurative art itself. But around 1913, the break up could already be felt, with new visual
issues emerging and the scales tipping toward the Russian Avant-Garde. In March 1914,
Pavel Filonov declared that ‘the centre of gravity of art’ has been transferred to Russia1.
In 1912, Filonov criticised Picasso and Cubo-futurism, saying that it ‘leads to an impasse
by its principles.’2 This statement came at a time when this movement was triumphing in
Russian exhibitions. The most sensitive Russian thinkers and painters saw in Cubism and
in the creations of Picasso not so much the beginning of a new art but the outcome of
the ancient line of which Ingres was the origin.
Nicholas Berdiaev: ‘Picasso, this is not the new art. It is the conclusion of a bygone
art.’ 3 Mikhail Matiushin: ‘Thus, Picasso, decomposing reality through the new method of
Futurist fragmentation, follows the old photographic process of drawing from nature,
only indicating the scheme of the movement of planes.’4 Mikhail Le Dantyu: ‘It is
profoundly incorrect to consider Picasso as a beginning. He is perhaps more of a
conclusion, one would be wrong to follow this path.’ 5 Nikolai Punin: ‘One cannot see in
Picasso that it is the dawning of a new era.’ 6 The French Cubists have stopped at the
threshold of non-figuration. Their theorists wrote in 1912: ‘Nevertheless, let’s confess
that the reminiscence of natural forms cannot be absolutely disowned, at least not for the
moment.’ 7 This Rubicon was then resolutely transgressed by Russian art in the work of
Wassily Kandinsky and Mikhail Larionov, Pavel Filonov and Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir
Tatlin and Mikhail Matiushin. The consequences of this approach have been visible for
a long time in Russian art, particularly in the 1920s, although non-figurative painting
only interested artists for a short period of time. Malevich presented, for the first time,
forty-nine Suprematist paintings at the exhibition that opened 15 December 1915 at the
gallery of Nadeshda Dobytshina on the Field of Mars (Petrograd). ‘The keys to
Suprematism’, he wrote, ‘lead me to a discovery that I am not yet aware of. My new
painting does not belong exclusively to the earth. Earth is abandoned like a house eaten
from within by woodworm. And there is actually in man, in his conscience, an aspiration
for space, a desire to detach himself from Earth.’ 8
Kazimir Malevich,
Red Square, 1915.
Oil on canvas, 53 x 53 cm.
The State Russian Museum,
St Petersburg.
7
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The Spiritual Universe
Ivan Puni,
Still Life with Letters. The Spectrum of
the Refugees, 1919.
Oil on canvas, 124 x 127 cm.
Private collection.
8
For most painters, despite the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus and Giordano Bruno,
the Universe remained geocentric (from an emotional and practical point of view, that is
to say, in their creativity). The imagination and structures in their paintings remain
pledged to a terrestrial attraction. Perspective and horizon, notions of top and bottom
were for them undeniably obvious. Suprematism would disrupt all of this. In some way,
Malevich was looking at Earth from space or, in another way, his ‘spiritual universe’
suggested to him this cosmic vision. Numerous Russian philosophers, poets and painters
at the beginning of the century returned to the Gnostic idea of primitive Christianity,
which saw a typological identity between the spiritual world of man and the Universe.
‘The human skull,’ wrote Malevich, ‘offers to the movement representations of the same
infinity, it equals the Universe, because all that man sees in the Universe is there.’ 9 Man
had begun to feel that he was not only the son of Earth but also an integral part of the
Universe. The spiritual movement of man’s inner world generates subjective forms of
space and time. The contact of these forms with reality transforms this reality in the
work of an artist into art, therefore a material object whose essence is, in fact, spiritual.
In this way the comprehension of the spiritual world as a microscopic universe brings
about a new ‘cosmic’ understanding of the world. In the 20th century this new
comprehension lead to the creation of radical changes in art. In the non-objective
paintings of Malevich, whose rejection of terrestrial ‘criteria of orientation,’ notions of
top and bottom, right and left, no longer exist, because all orientations are independent,
like the Universe. This implies such a level of ‘autonomy’ in the organisation and
structure of the work that the links between the orientations, dictated by gravity, are
broken. An independent world appears, an enclosed world, possessing its own ‘field’ of
attraction-gravitation, a ‘small planet’ with its own place in the harmony of the universe.
The non-representative canvases of Malevich did not break with the natural principle.
Moreover, the painter goes on to qualify it himself as a ‘new pictorial realism.’ 10 But its
‘natural character’ expresses itself at another level, both cosmic and planetary. The great
merit of non-objective art was not only to give painters a new vision of the world but
also to lay bare to them the first elements of the pictorial form, while going on to enrich
the language of painting. Shklovsky expressed this well in talking about Malevich and
his champions: ‘The Suprematists have done in art what a chemist does in medicine. They
have cleared away the active part of the media11.’
At the beginning of 1917 Russian art offered a true range of contradictory
movements and artistic trends. There were the declining Itinerants, the World of Art,
which had lost its guiding role, while the Jack of Diamonds group (also known as the
Knave of Diamonds), was quickly beginning to establish itself in the wake of Cezannism,
Suprematism, Constructivism and Analytical Art. To characterise the post-revolutionary
Avant-Garde, we will only address the essential phenomena of art and the principle
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