Russian avant-garde
Dropping depiction for pure form, colour and invented language: art as a new reality of its own
How to recognise it
- Geometric shapes floating on white ground
- Flat pure colours without modelling
- Objects split into facets and rays
- Poems of broken lines and coined words
Why it emerged
Moscow and St Petersburg absorbed Cézanne, Cubism and Futurism through the Shchukin and Morozov collections, and pre-revolutionary unrest pushed artists to break with the past. After 1917 the avant-garde briefly ran schools, museums and state commissions.
Examples
Black Square1915 · Kazimir MalevichPainting's 'zero point': hung in the icon corner at the 0.10 show, it launched Suprematism.png?width=640 "Kazimir Malevich · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons")
Suprematist Composition: White on White1918 · Kazimir MalevichSuprematism at its limit: a tilted white square nearly dissolving into a white field
Victory over the Sun1913 · Aleksei Kruchenykh, Mikhail Matyushin, Kazimir MalevichFuturist opera in invented 'zaum' language; Malevich's set designs first featured his square
A Cloud in Trousers1915 · Vladimir MayakovskyA shouted poem of love and revolt whose staircase lines and street slang broke Russian verse
Beat the Whites with the Red Wedgec. 1919–1920 · El LissitzkyA Civil War poster made only of geometric shapes: Suprematism turned to propagandaHow it spread
- 1910 Moscow
- 1913 St Petersburg
- 1919 Vitebsk
- 1922 Berlin
Meanwhile elsewhere
- Ming and Qing Porcelain Asia
- Peredvizhniki (The Wanderers) Eastern Europe & Russia
- Art Nouveau Europe
- Expressionism Europe
- Cubism Europe
- Harlem Renaissance Americas
- Modern architecture (International Style) Whole world
- Constructivism Eastern Europe & Russia
- Art Deco Europe
- Mexican muralism Americas
- Surrealism Europe
- Socialist realism Eastern Europe & Russia