This December, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York will showcase the role of Supremacism and Constructivism in Russia’s art world between 1912 and 1934. The emphatically titled exhibit, A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde, will fall in line with the centennial of the Russian Revolution in 2017 and display works relating to the realms of painting, drawing, sculpture, prints, book and graphic design, film, photography, and architecture.
A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Gard will feature works from some of Russia’s leading figures within the aforementioned disciplines. These include Vladimir Tatlin, Iakov Chernikov, El Lissitzky, Kasimir Malevich, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lyubov Popova, Alexandr Rodchenko, and Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg, among others. The exhibition will use their work to show the sense of creative urgency, radical cross-fertilization, and synthesis that was present during the era. The exhibit will also illustrate the Russian avant-garde’s impact on the sociopolitics and the production of art at the time. In addition, utilitarian objects that reflect that period’s changing in production methods and social and political climate will be on display.
Architecture–and in particular, Constructivist architecture—is due to feature in A Revolutionary Impulse. Work from renowned Constructivist Vladimir Tatlin will be exhibited; they were famously seen at The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings 0.10 (zero-ten), held in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) in December 1915. Nonrepresentational counter-reliefs–reliefs with a particularly pronounced tension–from Tatlin’s rare Brochure for Tatlin’s counter-reliefs exhibited at 0.10 are due to be on display.
Tatlin, though, isn’t the only Constructivist architect who’ll be featured. Iakov Chernikov’s Architectural Fantasies: 101 Compositions in Color, 101 Architectural Miniatures–his work to imagine a future symbolizing the avant-garde culture within the Soviet Union, never realized due to Joseph Stalin’s opposition to the Constructivism movement—will also be on view. As too will be Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist composition Airplane Flying which was exhibited alongside Tatlin and Chernikov’s work at 0.10, 101 years ago. Malevich’s later Suprematist compositional workWhite on White (1918), one of the iconoclastic paintings during its time, will also be exhibited.
A Revolutionary Impulse: The Rise of the Russian Avant-Garde will be open to the public from December 03, 2016 through March 12, 2017.
