Impressionism in Russia @ Museum Barberini, Postdam + Other venues

Impressionism in Russia 

Dawn of the Avant-Garde

Museum Barberini, Postdam 

Through January 9, 2022

Abram Arkhipov

The Visit, 1914

Oil on canvas, 97.7 x 150 cm

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Nikolai Meshcherin

Moonlit Night, 1905

Tempera on canvas, 55 × 80.6 cm

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Paris was the prime destination for Russian artists before 1900. They could see works by Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir in the French capital, and they drew inspiration from the subject matter and painting style of the French Impressionists. Upon returning to Russia, they painted outdoors and sought to depict the fleetingness of a moment in their depictions of everyday life in Russia. Even painters who later became part of the Russian avant-garde developed their new art from the Impressionist study of light. This exhibition at the Museum Barberini is dedicated to the reception of French painting in Russia, a subject that has received little attention to date. With over eighty works, the show demonstrates the extent of their international visual vocabulary around 1900 and places Russian artists of the period––from Ilia Repin to Kasimir Malevich––in context of Western European modern art.

Konstantin Korovin

Paris: Café de la Paix, 1906

Oil on canvas, 60,3 x 73,5 cm

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Nicolas Tarkhoff

Carnival Day in Paris, 1900

Oil on canvas, 100 x 65 cm

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

“A brief glance at an Impressionist painting determined art history,” explains Ortrud Westheider, director of the Museum Barberini. “When Vasily Kandinsky encountered a work from Claude Monet’s series of Grainstacks in an exhibition in Moscow in 1896, he saw, to his confusion, a picture composed of bright colors––but was unable to recognize any particular object. This unsettling experience led him to renounce the idea of the motif in his work and inspired his artistic development toward nonrepresentative painting. While this anecdote is well-known, it is only a small piece in the mosaic of the complex relationship between French Impressionism and Russian art in the period between 1860 and 1925. Impulses from the Impressionists did not only revolutionize Kandinsky’s work; they were the starting point for numerous artists of the avant-garde who were to transform the Impressionist treatment of light into Rayonism, Cubo-Futurism, and Suprematism.”

As the leading European metropolis of art, Paris attracted painters from the academies of Moscow and St. Petersburg since the 1860s. Through their examination of the Impressionist style of painting modern life, they liberated themselves from the academic rules that governed Realist painting in Russia. Interaction with French painting inspired artists such as Ilia Repin, Konstantin Korovin, and Valentin Serov to produce works that in addition to the impression of the present moment also showed a sensory world that confronted modern life. Electric lights, shopwindow displays, and the architecture of the modern boulevards ofered them motifs that they treated with great painterly freedom. The visual efects of the changing times of day captivated them. The nocturnal illumination of streets especially fascinated Korovin and Nicolas Tarkhof, who made this topic popular in Russia.

Valentin Serov

Lelia Derviz, 1892

Oil on canvas, 67,5 x 45,5 cm

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Olga Rozanova

Corner of the House and Bullfinches in the Tree: Winter, 1907–08

Oil on canvas on hard fiber, 63 x 51 cm

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The practice of painting outdoors that was inspired by the Impressionists transformed Russian art and made landscapes popular. Repin, Vasily Polenov, and their pupils Korovin and Serov explored nature around Moscow and traveled to the expanses of the north. Painting en plein air and a sketch-like style led artists to motifs that expressed a zest for life, encouraging a shift away from the existential subjects of Russian art. The changing sunlight lent a guise of lightness and optimism to their works. In portraits and pictures of families, Russian artists linked candor with psychological depth to create their own style of Impressionism. Questions of national identity were just as important as the relationship to the tradition of Realism in painting. Impressionism, with its focus on spontaneous expression and modernity that transcended borders, gave new impulses for dealing with this.

At the turn of the century summer houses in the country became a place of refuge for Russian urbanites. Artists captured the carefreeness of modern recreational activities at the datcha in Impressionist interiors that are suffused with light. Studies of light effects in indoor scenes and in still lifes led to a new appreciation of these genres that had received little attention at the academy in Moscow.

A second generation of Russian artists in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century became acquainted with Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, painting styles that experimented with bright, unmixed colors. Like the French Post-Impressionists, many Russian painters of this generation aimed to have international careers and were interested in staying in the West for more than their studies.

Landscape painting became the first field of experimentation for artists such as Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, and Kazimir Malevich. They considered themselves Impressionists before founding the Russian avant-garde with expressive Rayonism and nonrepresentational Suprematism after 1910. Now that color had been liberated, painters found the energy that stood for the dynamism and renewal of a new age. Impressionist observation was transformed into the Cubist and Futurist manner of breaking down of surfaces, which was made absolute as luminous nothingness in Kazimir Malevich’s series White on White.

Kazimir Malevich

Summer (or House and Garden), 1906

Oil on canvas, 19,2 x 31 cm

Collection of Vladimir Tsarenkov, London

Kazimir Malevich

Construction in Dissolution (Three Arches on a Diagonal Element in White), 1917

Oil on canvas, 98 x 70,5 cm

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

The exhibition includes over eighty loans from institutions such as ABA Gallery in New York, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the Collection of Iveta and Tamaz Manasherov in Moscow, the Collection of Vladimir Tsarenkov in London, the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan in Kazan, the Collection of Elsina Khayrova in London, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam as well as from private collections, and it is presented in cooperation with the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden and the State Tretyakov Gallery.

The exhibition was curated by Ortrud Westheider and Alla Chilova. Various aspects of the exhibition’s subject matter were the subject of the 11th Symposium of the Museum Barberini in November 2019. The lectures held at the conference, including those by Olga Atroshchenko, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; Rosalind P. Blakesley, University of Cambridge; Maria Kokkori, The Art Institute of Chicago; Susanne Strätling, Universität Potsdam; Irina Vakar, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; and Tatiana Yudenkova, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, are published in the exhibition catalog that accompanies the show.

Exhibited Artists: Abram Efimovich Arkhipov, Vladimir Davidovich Baranov-Rossiné, David Davidovich Burliuk, Vladimir Davidovich Burliuk, Robert Rafailovich Falk, Nicolai Fechin (Nikolai Ivanovich Feshin), Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova, Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar, Georgy Bogdanovich Iakulov, Alexej von Jawlensky (Aleksei Georgievich Iavlensky), Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin, Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy, Aleksandr Vasilevich Kuprin, Mikhail Fedorovich Larionov, Isaak Ilich Levitan, Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, Nikolai Vasilevich Meshcherin, Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov, Ilia Efimovich Repin (Ilya Répine), Olga Vladimirovna Rozanova, Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov, Nicolas Tarkhoff (Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tarkhov), Sergei Arsenevich Vinogradov, Stanislav Iulianovich Zhukovsky.

Impressionism in Russia: Dawn of the Avant-Garde

Exhibition and catalog: Ortrud Westheider and Alla Chilova

Edited by Ortrud Westheider, Michael Philipp, and Henning Schaper

Published by Prestel, Hardcover with dust jacket  

264 pages, 24 x 30 cm, 200 color illustrations

Essays:

• Tatiana Yudenkova: In the Land of Impressionism: Russian Artists’ Travels to France

• Rosalind P. Blakesley: Realist Impressions or Impressionist Realities: A Complex Boundary in Russian Art

• Olga Atroshchenko: A New Art: The Establishment of Impressionism in Russia

• Susanne Strätling: Perceptual Force Fields: Impressionism and Energetics

• Maria Kokkori: Color Is Light: From Impressionism to Suprematism

• Irina Vakar: Dissolution of the Object: Impressionist Traditions in the Russian Avant-Garde

MUSEUM BARBERINI 

Humboldtstr. 5–6, 14467 Potsdam 

www.museum-barberini.com

First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art

First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art
28 January - 28 February, 2005

Why a New Biennale in Moscow?

The First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, initiated by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, marks an important step forward in the process of reintegrating contemporary Russian art into the international art world.

One of the most obvious consequences of political and economical stabilisation in Russia is the growing interest of Russian society in contemporary culture, and more precisely contemporary art. In the last decade a totally new Russian art infrastructure has emerged through art fairs, galleries, non-profit exhibition spaces, festivals and conferences. For these reasons, 2005 is the right time for Moscow to create a major international art event, the first of its kind in the country.

The Moscow Biennale aims to become not only a great event in the artistic life of Moscow and Russia but also to play an important social, cultural and political role internationally. It is intended to be not only a particular powerful event, but a new institutional project that will strengthen relationships between curators, art historians, managers, federal authorities, sponsors and trustees, mass media and public opinion on contemporary art both in and outside Russia itself. It is the organisers’ intention that The Moscow Biennale will become a reproducible strong structure that will find its place in the network of other major international art forums.

The Theme of Biennale

Under the theme, Dialectics of Hope, the main exhibition will present art that focuses on one of the most fundamental experiences of a modern human being: hope. On the one hand, hope exists as a private existential feeling, touching particularly on issues of care or caring, on the other it is found in the older Utopian vision of a shared social feeling. The dialectical character of hope today as well as its emergence in different forms of contemporary art will be the focus for the exhibition, reflecting the influence that social and political changes exert on the way we attempt to anticipate our own future and the development of the societies to which we belong. In politically turbulent and worrying times, the function of hope as an organising principle of our lives becomes increasingly apparent.

Structure

The first Moscow Biennale will include a main project organized by its international curatorial team, and a series of parallel events. The selection of artists and the development of the main projects have been a collective endeavour of the curatorial team.

The 2005 exhibition is the first element of a larger project conceived as a trans-generational endeavour that will unfold in a series of steps until 2007. This first manifestation concentrates on young artists from all over the world. Its main aim is to describe the state of contemporary art and the new issues addressed by the artists of the 21st century. The same curatorial team will also work on the 2007 exhibition.

The main project of the Moscow Biennale 2005 will be accompanied by a series of special projects and a wide parallel program representing contemporary art from Russia and the former Soviet Union. The events will be held in a number of key venues in and around the centre of the city of Moscow.

Curators

- Joseph Backstein, Co-ordinating Curator (Russia), Deputy Director of the State Centre for Museums and Exhibitions ROSIZO — Curator of the Russian exhibition at the 25th Biennale in Sao Paolo, 2002 — Curator of the Russian Pavilion at the 48th Venice Biennale, 1999.

- Daniel Birnbaum (Sweden/Germany), Rector of the Stadelschule Art Academy, Frankfurt am Main and Director of Kunsthalle Portikus — Co-curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale, 2003 — International Foundation Manifesta Board Member (Amsterdam), since 2000.

- Iara Boubnova (Bulgaria), Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia — International Foundation Manifesta Board Member, since 2002 — Co-curator of Manifesta 4 (Frankfurt am Main), 2002 — Curator of Bulgarian National Participation in the 48th Venice Biennale, 1999.

- Nicolas Bourriaud (France), Director of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (with Jerome Sans), Founder & Director of the magazine Documents — Co-Curator of the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, 2005 — Curator of the Aperto at the 45th Venice Biennale, 1993 — Curator of Unmoving Short Movies at the Venice Biennale, 1990.

- Rosa Martinez (Spain), Artistic Director of the Arsenale, Venice Biennale, 2005 — Chief Curator of the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art — Curator of the Spanish pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale, 2003 — Curator of the 3rd SITE Santa Fe Biennale (New Mexico), 1999 — Artistic Director of the 5th International Istanbul Biennale, 1997.

- Hans Ulrich Obrist (Switzerland/France), Curator at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Co-curator of the exhibitions Cities on the Move, Laboratorium, Utopia Station at the 50th Venice Biennale, 1st Berlin Biennale, Manifesta 1. The first volume of his ongoing interview project was recently published: Hans Ulrich Obrist Interviews (Milan: Edizioni Charta, Pitti Imagine 2003).

Chairman of the Organizing Committee: Michail Shvydkoy, Head of the Federal Agency for Culture and Film.

Commissioner: Evgeny Zyablov, Director of the State Centre for Museums and Exhibitions ROSIZO.

Venues

The main project will be realised at the former Lenin Museum, in the very centre of Moscow, near the Red Square. Built in 1892 as the Moscow City Hall, in October 1917 the building became residence of the Committee on Public Security which aimed to prevent the developing revolution. When Soviet power was established, it was first occupied by the Moscow Soviet and then by the Moscow Trade Union Soviet, and since 1936 served as the Lenin Museum, a unique collection of items related to Lenin’s life and activity.

Second part of the main project will occupy the Schusev State Museum of Architecture. Third part of it will be located at the metro station Vorobyevy Gory (Sparrow Hills, former Lenin Hills) — the longest station of the Moscow Metro.

Website: www.moscowbiennale.ru

Russian Avant-Garde, MoMA, NYC - The Russian Avant-Garde Book: 1910–1934

The Russian Avant-Garde Book: 1910–1934

MoMA, New York

March 21 - May 21, 2002

The Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1910–1934 is prompted by an extraordinary gift to MoMA of over 1,000 Russian avant-garde illustrated books from The Judith Rothschild Foundation, New York. The gift is the largest to the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books since Abby Aldrich Rockefeller established the collection in the 1940s with her donation of 1,600 prints. The Rothschild gift represents all the significant artistic developments of the period and features works by major artists including Kazimir Malevich, Olga Rozanova, Natalia Goncharova, El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and many others. It also encompasses areas of special interest to members of the Russian avant-garde, including children’s books and Judaica. This comprehensive resource has been characterized by experts in the field as among the most significant collections of its kind worldwide.

The Rothschild gift joins over 400 works from the Russian avant-garde period already in the Museum’s collections of painting and sculpture, drawings, photography, film, architecture and design, prints and illustrated books, as well as the library. MoMA’s founding director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., initiated the Museum’s interest in this crucial period in the history of modern art.

It is widely recognized that Russian avant-garde artists’ experimentation was fundamental to the development of abstraction in the early years of this century. The 1917 Revolution brought about a complete transformation of the artist’s role in Russian society with utilitarianism defining the new cultural climate. The exhibition is organized around three major themes:

A Slap in the Face of Public Taste

The first section is titled after an early manifesto by artists and poets, in which they responded to what they considered the stultifying conventions of academic taste and bourgeois sensibility. Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Olga Rozanova, Kazimir Malevich, among others, collaborated with writers and poets, including Aleksei Kruchenykh, Velimir Khlebnikov, and Vasilii Kamenskii, to forge a new language of abstraction through experimentation with Cubo-Futurism, Primitivism, and Rayonism. Many of these poets and painters practiced both mediums, and most were friends, siblings, or spouses; collaboration on books was one important result of this creative ferment. Early books were intended to shock the reader with variously sized pages made of coarse papers, illustrations entwined with printed, hand-written, and rubber-stamped text, as well as provocative covers.

Transform the World!

The second section expands on the developments of the earlier period. Artists turned to book design with great optimism to reach the masses. In both paintings and printed treatises, Malevich pushed abstraction to its limit in his development of Suprematism, conceived as a metaphysical visual metaphor for heralding the new world. Aleksandr Rodchenko and El Lissitzky were major artistic voices in the development of Constructivism, which focused on the rational and machine-made and came to symbolize a new future. Typography became an important aspect of Constructivism, often combined with bold black and red abstract designs. Poets such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, who was also an artist, played an integral role in the interdisciplinary development of illustrated books during this period. Photography was also a primary vehicle of communication, and photomontage dominated many covers and illustrations.

Building Socialism: Agitation Art

The final section of the exhibition presents the variety of ways the art of the book was used to serve the Soviet government’s agenda. Journals showcased modern Soviet architecture with covers of bold graphic design. Trade catalogues promoted Soviet industry with innovative layouts and typographical design. Magazines designed by avant-garde artists utilized photography and photomontage to spread the message of Soviet modernization and progress to the broadest possible audience. Innovative works by Lissitzky and Rodchenko, as well as by other artists including Varvara Stepanova, Solomon Telingater, Gustav Klutsis and the Stenberg brothers, demonstrate a continued experimentation with the book format. The exhibition ends with the notorious 1934 decree by Stalin that only Socialist Realism would be tolerated. Thus, a remarkable period of innovation in the production of illustrated books came to a close.

Catalogue

The Russian Avant-Garde Book: 1910–1934

Catalogue of the exhibition

© The Museum of Modern Art

A major publication illustrating all the books in the exhibition accompanies the exhibition. In addition to over 600 illustrations, the catalogue contains essays by the co-curators and other specialists: Jared Ash, Nina Gurianova, and Gerald Janecek. These includes an overview of the Russian avant-garde book in the context of the history of modern illustrated books; studies of the book both before and after the 1917 Revolution; and texts on specific stylistic and literary issues. The documentary portion of the book includes a complete checklist of all the books in the gift from The Judith Rothschild Foundation. There is also be a comprehensive bibliography and index.

The exhibition is organized by Deborah Wye, Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art, and Margit Rowell, Guest Curator.

The Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1910–1934 travels to the Museo Nacional Centra de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, November 4, 2002-January 27, 2003; and the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, September 24, 2003-January 25, 2004.

MoMA - MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NYC

www.moma.org

Updated 16.01.2021