Soviet art
Encyclopedia
Soviet art was the visual art produced in the Soviet Union
.
. The instrument for this was created just days before the October Revolution
, known as Proletkult
, an abbreviation for "Proletarskie kulturno-prosvetitelnye organizatsii" (Proletarian Cultural and Enlightenment Organizations). A prominent theorist of this movement was Aleksandr Bogdanov. Initially Narkompros (ministry of education), which was also in charge of the arts, supported Proletkult. However the latter sought too much independence from the ruling Communist Party
of Bolsheviks, gained negative attitude of Vladimir Lenin
, by 1922 declined considerably, and was eventually disbanded in 1932.
The ideas of Proletkult attracted the interests of Russian avantgarde, who strived to get rid of the conventions of "bourgeois art". Among notable persons of this movement was Kazimir Malevich
. However the ideas of the avantgarde eventually clashed with the newly emerged state-sponsored direction of Socialist Realism
.
In search of new forms of expression, the Proletkult organisation was highly eclectic in its art forms, and thus was prone to harsh criticism for inclusion of such modern directions as impressionism
and cubism
, since these movements existed before the revolution and hence were associated with "decadent bourgeois art".
Among early experiments of Proletkult was pragmaic aesthetic of industrial art, the prominent theoretist being Boris Arvatov.
Another group was UNOVIS
, a very short-lived but influential collection of young artists led by Kasimir Malevich in the 1920s.
. In the spring of 1932 the Central Committee of the Communist Party decreed that all existing literary and artistic groups and organizations should be disbanded and replaced with unified associations of creative professions. Accordingly, the Moscow and Leningrad Union of Artists was established on August 1932, which brought the history of post-revolutionary art to a close. The epoch of Soviet art began.
The best known Soviet artists were Isaak Brodsky
, Alexander Samokhvalov
, Boris Ioganson
, Alexander Deyneka
, Alexander Laktionov, Yuri Neprintsev and other painters from Moscow and Leningrad School. Moscow artist Aleksandr Gerasimov
during his career produced a large number of heroic paintings of Joseph Stalin
and other members of the Politburo
. Nikita Khrushchev
later alleged that Kliment Voroshilov
spent more time posing in Gerasimov's studio than he did attending to his duties in the People's Commissariat of Defense. Gerasimov's painting shows a mastery of classical representational techniques.
However, Art exhibitions of 1935–1960 disprove the claims that artistic life of the period was suppressed by the ideology and artists submitted entirely to what was then called ‘social order’. A great number of landscapes, portraits, genre paintings and studies exhibited at the time pursued purely technical purposes and were thus free from any ideology. Thematic painting was also approached in a similar way.
In the post-war period between the mid-fifties and sixties, the Leningrad school was approaching its vertex. Artists who had graduated from the Academy (Repin Institute of Arts) in the 1930s–50s were in their prime. They were quick to present their art, they strived for experiments and were eager to appropriate a lot and to learn even more. Their time and contemporaries, with all its images, ideas and dispositions found it full expression in portraits by Lev Russov, Victor Oreshnikov, Boris Korneev, Semion Rotnitsky, Vladimir Gorb, Engels Kozlov, landscapes by Nikolai Timkov, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Sergei Osipov, Alexander Semionov, Arseny Semionov, Nikolai Galakhov, genre paintings by Nikolai Pozdneev, Yuri Neprintsev, Yevsey Moiseenko, Andrey Milnikov. Art of this period showed extraordinary taste for life and creative work.
In 1957, the first all-Russian Congress of Soviet artists took place in Moscow. In 1960, the all-Russian Union of Artists was organized. Accordingly, these events influenced the art life in Moscow, Leningrad and province. The scope of experimentation was broadened; in particular, this concerned the form and painterly and plastic language. Images of youths and students, rapidly changing villages and cities, virgin lands brought under cultivation, grandiose construction plans being realized in Siberia and the Volga region, great achievements of Soviet science and technology became the chief topics of the new painting. Heroes of the time – young scientists, workers, civil engineers, physicians – become the most popular heroes of paintings.
At this period, life provided artists with plenty of thrilling topics, positive figures and images. Legacy of many great artists and art movements became available for study and public discussions again. This greatly broadened artists’ understanding of the realist method and widened its possibilities. It was the repeated renewal of the very conception of realism
that made this style dominates in the Russian art throughout its history. Realist tradition gave rise to many trends of contemporary painting
, including painting from nature, "severe style" painting and decorative art. However, during this period impressionism
, postimpressionism, cubism
and expressionism
also had their fervent adherents and interpreters.
in 1953, and Nikita Khrushchev
's Thaw
, paved the way for a wave of liberalization in the arts throughout the Soviet Union
. Although no official change in policy took place, artists began to feel free to experiment in their work, with considerably less fear of repercussions than during the Stalinist period.
In the 1950s Moscow artist Ely Bielutin
encouraged his students to experiment with abstractionism
, a practice thoroughly discouraged by the Artists' Union, which strictly enforced the official policy of Socialist Realism
. Artists who chose to paint in alternative styles had to do so completely in private and were never able to exhibit or sell their work. As a result, Nonconformist Art developed along a separate path than the Official Art that was recorded in the history books.
Life
magazine published two portraits by two painters, who to their mind, were most representative of Russian Arts of the period: it was Serov, an official Soviet icon and Anatoly Zverev
, an underground Russian avant-garde
expressionist. Serov's portrait of Vladimir Lenin
and Zverev's selfportrait were associated by many with an eternal Biblical struggle of Satan and Saviour. When Khrushchev learned about the publication he was outraged and forbade all contacts with Western visitors, closed down all semi legal exhibitions. And of course Zverev was the main target of his outrage.
The Lianozovo Group was formed around the artist Oskar Rabin in the 1960s and included artists such as Valentina Kropivnitskaya, Vladimir Nemukhin
, and Lydia Masterkova. While not adhering to any common style, these artists sought to faithfully express themselves in the mode they deemed appropriate, rather than adhere to the propagandistic style of Socialist Realism
.
Tolerance of Nonconformist Art by the authorities underwent an ebb and flow until the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union
in 1991. Artists took advantage of the first few years after the death of Stalin to experiment in their work without the fear of persecution. In 1962, artists experienced a slight setback when Nikita Khrushchev
appeared at the exhibition of the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Artist's Union at the Manege
exhibition hall. Among the customary works of Socialist Realism
were a few abstract works by artists such as Ernst Neizvestny
and Eli Beliutin, which Khrushchev criticized as being "shit," and the artists for being "homosexuals." The message was clear: artistic policy was not as liberal as everyone had hoped.
Unfortunately, the history of late Soviet art has been dominated by politics and simplistic formulae. Both within the artworld and the general public, very little consideration has been given to the aesthetic character of the work produced in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, the official and unofficial art of the period usually stood in for either "bad" or "good" political developments. A more nuanced picture would emphasize that there were numerous competing groups making art in Moscow and Leningrad throughout this period. The most important figures for the international art scene have been the Moscow artists Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Andrei Monastyrsky, Vitaly Komar and Aleksandr Melamid.
The most infamous incident regarding nonconformist artists in the former Soviet Union was the 1974 Bulldozer Exhibition
, which took place in a park just outside of Moscow, and included work by such artists as Oskar Rabin, Komar and Melamid
, Alexandr Zhdanov
, and Leonid Sokov
. The artists involved had written to the authorities for permission to hold the exhibition but received no answer to their request. They decided to go ahead with the exhibition anyway, which consisted solely of unofficial works of art that did not fit into the rubric of Socialist Realism
. The KGB
put an end to the exhibition just hours after it opened by bringing in bulldozers to completely destroy all of the artworks present. Fortunately for the artists, the foreign press had been there to witness the event. The world-wide coverage of it forced the authorities to permit an exhibition of Nonconformist Art two weeks later in Izmailovsky Park in Moscow.
By the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev
's policies of Perestroika
and Glasnost
made it virtually impossible for the authorities to place restrictions on artists or their freedom of expression. With the collapse of the Soviet Union
, the new market economy enabled the development of a gallery system, which meant that artists no longer had to be employed by the state, and could create work according to their own tastes, as well as the tastes of their private patrons. Consequently, after around 1986 the phenomenon of Nonconformist Art in the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Early years
During the Russian Revolution a movement was initiated to put all arts to service of the dictatorship of the proletariatDictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, have control of political power. The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the...
. The instrument for this was created just days before the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, known as Proletkult
Proletkult
Proletkult was movement which arose in the Russian revolution and was active from 1917 to 1925 which aspired to provide the foundations for what was intended to be a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.The name is a portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" , which are better-known as...
, an abbreviation for "Proletarskie kulturno-prosvetitelnye organizatsii" (Proletarian Cultural and Enlightenment Organizations). A prominent theorist of this movement was Aleksandr Bogdanov. Initially Narkompros (ministry of education), which was also in charge of the arts, supported Proletkult. However the latter sought too much independence from the ruling Communist Party
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
of Bolsheviks, gained negative attitude of Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
, by 1922 declined considerably, and was eventually disbanded in 1932.
The ideas of Proletkult attracted the interests of Russian avantgarde, who strived to get rid of the conventions of "bourgeois art". Among notable persons of this movement was Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich was a Russian painter and art theoretician, born of ethnic Polish parents. He was a pioneer of geometric abstract art and the originator of the Avant-garde Suprematist movement.-Early life:...
. However the ideas of the avantgarde eventually clashed with the newly emerged state-sponsored direction of Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
.
In search of new forms of expression, the Proletkult organisation was highly eclectic in its art forms, and thus was prone to harsh criticism for inclusion of such modern directions as impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
, since these movements existed before the revolution and hence were associated with "decadent bourgeois art".
Among early experiments of Proletkult was pragmaic aesthetic of industrial art, the prominent theoretist being Boris Arvatov.
Another group was UNOVIS
UNOVIS
UNOVIS was a short-lived but influential group of Russian artists, founded and led by Kazimir Malevich at the Vitebsk Art School in 1919....
, a very short-lived but influential collection of young artists led by Kasimir Malevich in the 1920s.
Socialist Realism era
Officially approved art was required to follow the doctrine of Socialist RealismSocialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
. In the spring of 1932 the Central Committee of the Communist Party decreed that all existing literary and artistic groups and organizations should be disbanded and replaced with unified associations of creative professions. Accordingly, the Moscow and Leningrad Union of Artists was established on August 1932, which brought the history of post-revolutionary art to a close. The epoch of Soviet art began.
The best known Soviet artists were Isaak Brodsky
Isaak Brodsky
Isaak Izrailevich Brodsky , was a Soviet painter whose work provided a blueprint for the art movement of socialist realism. He is known for his iconic portrayals of Lenin and idealized, carefully crafted paintings dedicated to the events of the Russian Civil War and Bolshevik Revolution.Brodsky was...
, Alexander Samokhvalov
Alexander Nikolayevich Samokhvalov
Alexander Nikolayevich Samokhvalov - Soviet Russian painter, watercolorists, graphic artist, illustrator, and art teacher, Honored Arts Worker of the RSFSR, lived and worked in Leningrad, member of the Leningrad branch of Union of Artists of Russian Federation, regarded as one of the founder and ...
, Boris Ioganson
Boris Ioganson
Boris Vladimirovich Ioganson was a Russian painter.Ioganson was born in Moscow. His father's Swedish ancestors russified the surname "Johanson"" into "Ioganson." Ioganson attended the Moscow School of Art and studied under Kasatkin and Malyutin. He was a member of the Society of Young Artists,...
, Alexander Deyneka
Alexander Deyneka
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Deyneka was a Soviet Russian painter, graphic artist and sculptor, regarded as one of the most important Russian modernist figurative painters of the first half of the 20th century....
, Alexander Laktionov, Yuri Neprintsev and other painters from Moscow and Leningrad School. Moscow artist Aleksandr Gerasimov
Alexander Gerasimov
Alexander Mikhaylovich Gerasimov was a leading proponent of Socialist Realism in the visual arts, and painted Joseph Stalin and other Soviet leaders....
during his career produced a large number of heroic paintings of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and other members of the Politburo
Politburo
Politburo , literally "Political Bureau [of the Central Committee]," is the executive committee for a number of communist political parties.-Marxist-Leninist states:...
. Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
later alleged that Kliment Voroshilov
Kliment Voroshilov
Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov , popularly known as Klim Voroshilov was a Soviet military officer, politician, and statesman...
spent more time posing in Gerasimov's studio than he did attending to his duties in the People's Commissariat of Defense. Gerasimov's painting shows a mastery of classical representational techniques.
However, Art exhibitions of 1935–1960 disprove the claims that artistic life of the period was suppressed by the ideology and artists submitted entirely to what was then called ‘social order’. A great number of landscapes, portraits, genre paintings and studies exhibited at the time pursued purely technical purposes and were thus free from any ideology. Thematic painting was also approached in a similar way.
In the post-war period between the mid-fifties and sixties, the Leningrad school was approaching its vertex. Artists who had graduated from the Academy (Repin Institute of Arts) in the 1930s–50s were in their prime. They were quick to present their art, they strived for experiments and were eager to appropriate a lot and to learn even more. Their time and contemporaries, with all its images, ideas and dispositions found it full expression in portraits by Lev Russov, Victor Oreshnikov, Boris Korneev, Semion Rotnitsky, Vladimir Gorb, Engels Kozlov, landscapes by Nikolai Timkov, Vladimir Ovchinnikov, Sergei Osipov, Alexander Semionov, Arseny Semionov, Nikolai Galakhov, genre paintings by Nikolai Pozdneev, Yuri Neprintsev, Yevsey Moiseenko, Andrey Milnikov. Art of this period showed extraordinary taste for life and creative work.
In 1957, the first all-Russian Congress of Soviet artists took place in Moscow. In 1960, the all-Russian Union of Artists was organized. Accordingly, these events influenced the art life in Moscow, Leningrad and province. The scope of experimentation was broadened; in particular, this concerned the form and painterly and plastic language. Images of youths and students, rapidly changing villages and cities, virgin lands brought under cultivation, grandiose construction plans being realized in Siberia and the Volga region, great achievements of Soviet science and technology became the chief topics of the new painting. Heroes of the time – young scientists, workers, civil engineers, physicians – become the most popular heroes of paintings.
At this period, life provided artists with plenty of thrilling topics, positive figures and images. Legacy of many great artists and art movements became available for study and public discussions again. This greatly broadened artists’ understanding of the realist method and widened its possibilities. It was the repeated renewal of the very conception of realism
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
that made this style dominates in the Russian art throughout its history. Realist tradition gave rise to many trends of contemporary painting
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
, including painting from nature, "severe style" painting and decorative art. However, during this period impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
, postimpressionism, cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
and expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
also had their fervent adherents and interpreters.
Soviet Nonconformist Art
The death of Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
in 1953, and Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's Thaw
Khrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and...
, paved the way for a wave of liberalization in the arts throughout the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Although no official change in policy took place, artists began to feel free to experiment in their work, with considerably less fear of repercussions than during the Stalinist period.
In the 1950s Moscow artist Ely Bielutin
Ely Bielutin
Ely Bielutin – is a Russian visual artist and art theoretician, the founder of The New Reality artistic academy....
encouraged his students to experiment with abstractionism
Abstractionism
See also Abstract artAbstractionism is the theory that the mind obtains some or all of its concepts by abstracting them from concepts it already has, or from experience. One may, for example, abstract 'green' from a set of experiences which involve green along with other properties...
, a practice thoroughly discouraged by the Artists' Union, which strictly enforced the official policy of Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
. Artists who chose to paint in alternative styles had to do so completely in private and were never able to exhibit or sell their work. As a result, Nonconformist Art developed along a separate path than the Official Art that was recorded in the history books.
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazine published two portraits by two painters, who to their mind, were most representative of Russian Arts of the period: it was Serov, an official Soviet icon and Anatoly Zverev
Anatoly Zverev
Anatoly Zverev was a Russian artist, a member of the non-conformist movement and a founder of Russian Expressionism in the 1960s. He spent all of his life in Moscow....
, an underground Russian avant-garde
Russian avant-garde
The Russian avant-garde is an umbrella term used to define the large, influential wave of modern art that flourished in Russia approximately 1890 to 1930 - although some place its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960...
expressionist. Serov's portrait of Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
and Zverev's selfportrait were associated by many with an eternal Biblical struggle of Satan and Saviour. When Khrushchev learned about the publication he was outraged and forbade all contacts with Western visitors, closed down all semi legal exhibitions. And of course Zverev was the main target of his outrage.
The Lianozovo Group was formed around the artist Oskar Rabin in the 1960s and included artists such as Valentina Kropivnitskaya, Vladimir Nemukhin
Vladimir Nemukhin
Vladimir Nemukhin is a Russian artist. Nemukhin studied under the direction of Petr E. Sokolov and later Pavel Kuznezov)...
, and Lydia Masterkova. While not adhering to any common style, these artists sought to faithfully express themselves in the mode they deemed appropriate, rather than adhere to the propagandistic style of Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
.
Tolerance of Nonconformist Art by the authorities underwent an ebb and flow until the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in 1991. Artists took advantage of the first few years after the death of Stalin to experiment in their work without the fear of persecution. In 1962, artists experienced a slight setback when Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
appeared at the exhibition of the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Artist's Union at the Manege
Manege
Manège is the French word for a riding academy. As a loanword in Russian it is Manezh .It may refer to any riding school, riding arena or exercise rectangle, or specifically to:* the Salle du Manège in Paris, France...
exhibition hall. Among the customary works of Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
were a few abstract works by artists such as Ernst Neizvestny
Ernst Neizvestny
Ernst Iosifovich Neizvestny is a Russian sculptor. He currently lives and works in New York City. His last name in Russian literally means "unknown"....
and Eli Beliutin, which Khrushchev criticized as being "shit," and the artists for being "homosexuals." The message was clear: artistic policy was not as liberal as everyone had hoped.
Unfortunately, the history of late Soviet art has been dominated by politics and simplistic formulae. Both within the artworld and the general public, very little consideration has been given to the aesthetic character of the work produced in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, the official and unofficial art of the period usually stood in for either "bad" or "good" political developments. A more nuanced picture would emphasize that there were numerous competing groups making art in Moscow and Leningrad throughout this period. The most important figures for the international art scene have been the Moscow artists Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Andrei Monastyrsky, Vitaly Komar and Aleksandr Melamid.
The most infamous incident regarding nonconformist artists in the former Soviet Union was the 1974 Bulldozer Exhibition
Bulldozer Exhibition
Bulldozer Exhibition was an unofficial art exhibition on a vacant lot in the Belyayevo urban forest by Moscow avant-garde artists on September 15, 1974...
, which took place in a park just outside of Moscow, and included work by such artists as Oskar Rabin, Komar and Melamid
Komar and Melamid
Komar and Melamid is an artistic team made up of Russian-born American graphic artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid . In an artists’ statement they said that “Even if only one of us creates some of the projects and works, we usually sign them together...
, Alexandr Zhdanov
Alexandr Zhdanov
Alexandr Pavlovich Zhdanov was a Russian avant-garde painter.He was born in Vyoshenskaya, Soviet Union. Zhdanov was expelled four times from the Grekov Art School in Rostov-on-the-Don but managed to graduate after six years....
, and Leonid Sokov
Leonid Sokov
Leonid Sokov is a Russian artist and sculptor. He lives and works in New York City.-Life and work:Sokov was born in Mikhalevo in the Tver region, Russia in 1941 and graduated from the Stroganov Institute now called the Moscow School of Art and Industry, in 1969. He emigrated to the United States...
. The artists involved had written to the authorities for permission to hold the exhibition but received no answer to their request. They decided to go ahead with the exhibition anyway, which consisted solely of unofficial works of art that did not fit into the rubric of Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
. The KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
put an end to the exhibition just hours after it opened by bringing in bulldozers to completely destroy all of the artworks present. Fortunately for the artists, the foreign press had been there to witness the event. The world-wide coverage of it forced the authorities to permit an exhibition of Nonconformist Art two weeks later in Izmailovsky Park in Moscow.
By the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
's policies of Perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
and Glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
made it virtually impossible for the authorities to place restrictions on artists or their freedom of expression. With the collapse of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, the new market economy enabled the development of a gallery system, which meant that artists no longer had to be employed by the state, and could create work according to their own tastes, as well as the tastes of their private patrons. Consequently, after around 1986 the phenomenon of Nonconformist Art in the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
See also
- List of Russian artists
- List of painters of Saint Petersburg Union of Artists
- List of the Russian Landscape painters
- Saint Petersburg Union of ArtistsSaint Petersburg Union of ArtistsUnion of Artists of Saint Petersburg was established on August 2, 1932, as creative union of the Leningrad artists and arts critics. Prior to 1959, was called "Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists". Since 1959 was called as Leningrad branch of Union of Artists of Russian Federation...
External links
- Soviet avant-garde – video
- Book of Lynn Mally on Proletkult at California Digital LibraryCalifornia Digital LibraryThe California Digital Library is the University of California's 11th University Library. The CDL was founded to assist the ten University of California libraries in sharing their resources and holdings more effectively, in part through negotiating and acquiring consortial licenses on behalf of...
- Soviet art at the Russian Art Gallery
- Soviet Posters with history references
- Soviet World War II Paintings
- Sergei V. Ivanov. The Leningrad School of painting 1930 – 1990s. Historical outline.
- Lili Brochetain collection of non conformist art
- Electronic museum of russian posters art Collection of Advertising, Political, Military, Social posters from 1880 to current time
- Oleg Vassiliev Official Site
- Aleksandr Kosolapov Official Site
- Exibition BACK IN THE USSR-The Heirs of Unofficial Art , Venezia 2009 dedicated to the memory of the greatest collector of unofficial art Leonid Talochkin (1936-2002).