Amazonski @ Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich - A selection of works by women artists of the Russian Avant-Garde

AMAZONSKI
Galerie Gmurzynska, Zurich
June 8 - September 8, 2019

Galerie Gmurzynska presents “AMAZONKI,” a selection of works by women artists of the Russian Avant-Garde. With this project, Galerie Gmurzynska consolidates one of its main programmatic lines, dedicated since its origins in 1965 to women artists – a pioneering approach for that time.

After putting together several solo shows on women artists, Krystyna Gmurzynska organized the acclaimed exhibition “Women Artists of the Russian Avant-Garde” in 1979, the first ever exhibition to concentrate on the women of the Russian Avant-Garde. More recently, the Malaga branch of the State Russian Museum hosted the well-received show “Graphic works by Russian Women Artists from the collection of Krystyna Gmurzynska,” still on view until September 2019.

The exhibition in Zurich features some of the most remarkable women artists of the Russian Avant-Garde such as Maria and Xenia Ender, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Varvara Stepanova. The selection of works includes both visual and applied forms of art, from graphic works and theater designs to decorative projects. 

“AMAZONKI” is the Russian word for the mythological “Amazons,” and it was first applied to the female Russian Avant-Garde artists by the Cubo-futurist poet Benedikt Livshits, who described them as “real Amazons, Scythian riders.” An iconic exhibition, entitled “Amazons of the Russian Avant-Garde” was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1999-2001, to which Krystyna Gmurzynska was invited as the only non-institutional private lender in recognition of her famed 1979 exhibition “Women Artists of the Russian Avant-Garde.”

The work of these pioneering women artists was extremely influential in the world of the Avant-Garde and was highly significant in defining modernism as a whole. There was a remarkable boom in women’s creativity in early-20th century Russia, where the rapid modernization of society changed the status of the female artist and marked the beginning of women’s integration into cultural areas that were formerly the preserve of men only. Never before in the history of Western art had women played such an important role in the formation of new art movements or the redefining and reconfiguration of cultural spaces. 

Their influence can be clearly seen throughout the 20th Century. “AMAZONKI” thus continues with a separate exhibition of the preeminent female artist of Russian origin in the US: Louise Nevelson.

Though the “Amazons” were distinguished by their tremendous energy and a great force of will, they at no time constituted a single, uniform group formed through a common support of “feminist” ideas. Possessing a bright talent, each offered her own vision and direction to the development of Avant-Garde art, playing a vital role in larger artistic circles, where they were as individualistic, productive and exceptional as their male colleagues such as Kazimir Malevich, Mikhail Larionov and Alexander Rodchenko.

GALERIE GMURZYNSKA
Paradeplatz 2, Talstrasse 37, Zurich
www.gmurzynska.com

Natalia Goncharova @ Tate Modern, London

Natalia Goncharova
Tate Modern, London
6 June – 8 September 2019

Tate Modern presents the UK’s first ever retrospective of the Russian avant-garde artist Natalia Goncharova. This exhibition is a sweeping survey of a pioneering and radical figure, celebrated during her lifetime as a leading modernist artist. Throughout her varied career she challenged the limits of artistic, social and gender conventions, from parading through the streets of Moscow displaying futurist body art and scandalising newspapers of the day, to creating internationally acclaimed designs for fashion and the theatre.

Natalia Goncharova’s artistic output traces, influences and transcends the art movements of the 20th century. Born in 1881, she was inspired by the traditional customs and cultures of her native Central Russia – inspirations that pervade her life’s work. By the age of 32, she had already established herself as a leader of the Moscow avant-garde and was the subject of the first monographic exhibition ever staged by a Russian modernist artist. Arriving in Paris in 1914 at the invitation of Sergei Diaghilev, Natalia Goncharova was feted for her vibrant costume and set designs for the Ballets Russes.

The exhibition gathers together over 170 international loans which rarely travel, including from Russia’s State Tretyakov Gallery which houses the largest collection of Natalia Goncharova works in the world. At the heart of the show is a room evoking Natalia Goncharova’s remarkable 1913 retrospective that was held at the Mikhailova Art Salon in Moscow, which originally featured some 800 works.

Highlights include early paintings such as Peasants Gathering Apples 1911, formerly owned by the Morozov family, one of great art collectors of the early 20th century; the monumental seven-part work The Harvest 1911, bringing together paintings from four international collections; and her scandalous paintings of nudes, the first public display of which led to her trial for obscenity. A section devoted to Natalia Goncharova’s religious painting includes the Evangelists 1911, a four-panel work which had delighted London in 1912 but shocked Russia’s capital of St Petersburg in 1914 where the authorities removed it from display. A room is dedicated to her work in fashion design and her collaborations with Nadezhda Lamanova, couturier of the Imperial court, while her forays into interior design are represented by the decorative screen Spring 1928, commissioned by the Arts Club of Chicago and never lent until now, and Bathers 1922, a monumental triptych displayed in the UK for the first time.

In seeking to underline Natalia Goncharova’s ground-breaking experiments with the modernist styles of cubo-futurism, abstraction and rayonism, the exhibition reunites Linen from Tate’s own collection with Loom + Woman (The Weaver) from the National Museum of Wales and The Forest from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, all created in the same studio in 1913 and on display together for the first time since then.

Finally, the exhibition closes with a room dedicated to her collaborations with the Ballets Russes, the work for which she was best known from 1914 to the 1950s. It presents the artist’s most groundbreaking work for the theatre, including costume designs for Le Coq d’or (The Golden Cockerel) and Les Noces (The Wedding), both performed on London stages in the 1920s and 30s, as well as examples of actual costumes used in historic ballet productions.

Natalia Goncharova is curated by Natalia Sidlina, Curator of International Art, and Matthew Gale, Head of Displays, with Katy Wan, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. It is supported by LetterOne, with additional support from Mr Petr Aven, and is organised by Tate Modern in collaboration with Palazzo Strozzi, Florence where it will open on 28 September 2019 and the Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki where it will open on 21 February 2020.

TATE MODERN
Bankside, London SE1 9TG
www.tate.org.uk