RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE

Revision

Movements

• There are three main movements, belonging all of them to the same period of time: – Constructivism, – Suprematism – and Rayonism.

Influences

• The three of them had connection with other movements of the time as– Cubism, – Neo-Plasticism – and Bauhaus.

• Other of their common characteristics is the depiction of abstract form or figurative but with a great influence of Cubism.

Constructivism

• Constructivism was first created in 1913 when the sculptor Tatlin discovered the works of Braque and Picasso in Paris.

• Back in Russia he began producing assemblages but abandoning any precise subject of themes.

Constructivism

• The Constructivist art refers to the optimistic, non-representational relief construction, sculpture, kinetics and painting.

• The artists did not believe in abstract ideas, rather they tried to link art with concrete and tangible ideas.

Constructivism

• The artists did not believe in abstract ideas, rather they tried to link art with concrete and tangible ideas.

• Their depicted art was mostly three dimensional, and they also portrayed art that could be connected to their proletarian believes.

Constructivism

• Artists belonging to this movement are:– Rodchenko, – Tatlin, – Gabo, – Pevsner, – El Lissitzky, – Malevich.

Tatlin

Gabo

Pevner

Rodchencko

Suprematism

• Suprematism is considered the first systematic school of purely abstract pictorial composition in the modern movement, based on geometric figures

• It was the expression of the supremacy of pure sensation in creative art.

Suprematism

• The movement was founded by Malevich in Moscow, parallel to Constructivism

• The project was above all the brainchild of the painter and theoretician.

• According to him, to liberate art from the ballast of the representational world.

Suprematism

• The work of the painter no longer involved representing and creating chromatic harmonies or formal compositions, but rather attaining the limits of painting.

• It consisted of geometrical shapes flatly painted on the pure canvas surface.

Suprematism

• The pictorial space had to be emptied of all symbolic content and all content signifying form.

• It had to be decongested and cleared so as to show a new reality where thought was of prime importance.

El Lissitzky

Malevich

Rayonism

• Rayonism represents one of the first steps toward the development of abstract art in Russia and was founded by Larionov and Goncharova.

• The style was a synthesis of Cubism, Futurism and Orphism and it is also known as Cubo-Futurism

Rayonism

• They turned their back on all manner of technical formulation and all kinds of erudite cultural references.

• They produced works made up of diagonal beams of colour.

Rayonism

• Blocky Cubist shapes are closely packed in a dynamic Futurist rhythm across a surface also marked by a series of sharp diagonals.

• Some paintings featured one predominant colour.

Rayonism

• These compositions were worked out in an autonomous way: only the rhythms and harmonies then guided the painter in his attempt to make the dynamic radiation of the colours perceptible.

Larionov

Goncharova