THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE 1910-1930

The G. Costakis (1912-1990) Collection

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The top fine arts event of 1996 was the exhibition of the famous G. Costakis Collection at the National Gallery in Athens. It is comprised of works from artists representating the Russian Avant-Garde, many of whom belong to the Pantheon of the 20th century's most eminent artists.

Today, a big part of the Collection created by G. Costakis -who has greatly contributed to the preservation of Russian Avant-Garde works- belongs to the Tretiakov Gallery, while another substantial part belongs to the daughter of the collector, Ms. Aliki Costaki.

When George Costakis (1912-1990), an employee of the Canadian embassy in Moscow, was collecting oeuvres of Kandinsky, Chagall and Malevitch, the official Soviet State was ignoring these artists for political reasons; as it was in favor of the Socialist Realism artists. This retributive time has sent the artists of the "official" Soviet art into oblivion, while the artists of the Russian Avant-Garde appear in the pages of Art History.

As for the unique Costakis collection, it gained immense value both in terms of the art market and also from an artistic point of view. When G. Costakis -born in Russia and so a Soviet citizen- decided to return and settle down in Greece, the biggest part of the collection remained behind as property of the Soviet State, at the Tretiakov Gallery. The collection has since been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum (1981) and also in Duesseldorf (Germany). The oeuvres of the collection cover the period between 1910 and 1930.

1995: THE YEAR OF THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE

We can say that 1995 was the year of the Russian Avant-Garde. In Ferrara's Palazzo dei Diamanti the exhibition "Paul Gauguin and the Russian Avant-Garde" including Gauguin's works from the Moscow Pushkin Museum and the St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum, was attempting to retrace the influence of Gauguin's Primitivism on some of the artists of the Russian Avant-Garde. Russian art critics have discerned such influences in works from Kandinsky and others.

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Also during 1995 at the Fondation Galleria Gottardo in Lugano and at the County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, exhibitions of W. Kandinsky's (1866-1944) works took place. , along with Malevitch and Μodrian are the main representatives of Abstraction, while Kandinsky is considered the "Father" of Abstract Art.

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In Paris at the Galerie New York, yet another exhibition of drawings, aquarelles and oil paintings of Marc Chagall from his Russian period (1914-1922) took place. Marc Chagall was a close friend of G. Costakis. Indeed, because of this close relationship, it is assumed that Mark Chagall played a crucial consulting role in the formation of the famous G. Costakis collection.

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE

The art historian Stanislas Zadora presents the history and pre-history of the Russian Avant-Garde as a conflict between groups of Russian artists with different aesthetic and ideological beliefs. This conflict started towards the end of the 19th century and lasted until the prevalence of the Soviet suzerainty.

The confict in Russia was between the Slavophil painters -who considered painting to be a tool for educating the people— and those closer to Western Europe's movements who were professing "art for art" influenced mainly by German and English painters and -after 1905- by the French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. In Moscow, the major Russian collectors of this period, Serge Chtchoukine and Ivan Morozov, created impressive collections comprised of European Avant-Garde works.

In the mean time, two main trends appeared to prevail among the Russian painters. The first was expressed by a sort of Russian Symbolism and the second, the one closer to Europe's movements, was inspired by Parisian paintings. In 1907 the young Russian Symbolists founded their own union, the "Blue Rose", dealing a strong blow to old-fashioned Naturalism. During the same period, the ideas of German Expressionism arrived in Moscow, along with the Russian painters, namely W. Kandinsky and A. Jawlensky, who had studied in Germany.

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By the end of World War I, the avant-garde movements were boiling in Russia. The Italian Futurism also passed through the Russian frontiers and was united in a paradox-mixture with the Cubism-inspired, Geometrical Constructivism.

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Of all these avant-garde groups, two prevailed: The "Youth Union" of Olga Rozanova in St. Petersburg gathering together the Cybo-futurists; and the "Knave of diamonds" of the Bourliouk brothers in Moscow, giving shelter to artists ranging from Avant-Garde Cubists, like Larionov, Gontcharova and Malevitch, to artists of the Russian Impressionism, like P. Kontchalovski and R. Falk.

Even though the artistic influence from Western Europe was fruitful, a wave of reaction to the imported artistic movements (inspired by the Russian popular culture) had formed by 1909, asking for a return to its roots. This movement was expressed via religious paintings and "loubok", popular satirical drawings. Μ. Larionov, the introducer of Neo-Primitivism, was the first to adopt a "Primitive" style, adopted later by Ν.Gontcharova, V.Tatlin and K.Malevitch.

As for the Russian art-loving public, it was, at best, completely indifferent to the avant-garde artists and, at worst, it mocked their exhibitions aloud. The public still admired the masters of Academic painting and decorated its walls with Naturalists' works.

The attitude of "public opinion" did not intimidate the avant-garde artists: through more and more audacious innovations, they arrived at Abstraction. Larionov and Gontcharova introduced Rayaonism in 1910, while Kandinsky exhibited his first abstract aquarelle. Three years later, Tatlin exhibited his abstract spatial compositions and Malevitch introduced Suprematism.

The Revolution of 1917 was initially received with enthusiasm by the Russian Avant-Garde artists: they united to serve its cause, not only through the painting frame, but also by creating posters and decorating public places. The art must reach the people. From 1918 to 1922, there was a frenzy of creation and of enthusiasm. Many groups were formed, the theoretical discussions on the various aspects of Constructivism were heating up. The group of Productivists, inspired by the ideas of the proletariat's culture, believed that art should be useful primarily to the people and that artists should "throw a bridge across the chasm between art and industrial techniques". So, they aimed to play the role of engineers and to extend their activities beyond the established means of conjectural expression, i.e. in typography, architecture, stage-designing, cinema-making...

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The first to practice this concept were Tatlin, Lissitsky, Rodchenko, A. Exter, L. Popova. Soon their ideas gained fervent partisans in the intelligentsia and the artistic milieux in other countries outside the Soviet Union: in Poland, Hungary and, mostly, in Germany where these ideas will later shape up the famous Bauhaus movement. The poet Maiakovski, along with other artists, had the ambition of getting Futurism and the conquests of the avant-garde artists to serve the people; he did so via the pages of the Lef magazine.

But the grim Party's instructors had other views. They could not see without concern the political independence of the artistic groups from the State. So, while in the beginning the Party's leaders were sympathetic to the avant-garde art movements, they suddenly changed course: Lenin, Croupskaya and Lounatsarski declared that they were supporting only a kind of Art that is "militant and efficient, understandable by the masses".

This was the "green light" for the forgotten Russian realist artists: they took up the lead of the new-founded Socialist Realism groups against the avant-garde groups. Socialist Realism was the artistic dogma, formulated between 1923 and 1924, that Art has to be understandable by the masses and serve the building of Socialism as perceived by the Party. Stalin, later, will recognize in these obedient Socialist Realism artists the people's "Soul Engineers"...

So, the avant-garde artists found themselves persecuted. Some of them, who could, escaped to other countries where they settled down. Others stopped any artistic activity and became professors in secondary schools. While others had been obliged to give in to the officially inflicted Socialist Realism.

Only after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party in 1955 did the official cultural policy of the Soviet Union gradually become more tolerant and permit the growth of other forms of art, besides the renowned mediocrity of Socialist Realism whose name is connected to and bounded by the limits of official Soviet art.

Anna Hatziyannaki



© ART TOPOS, 1996
Last update: 10 Aug. 1996
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