Russian Avant-Garde. Evgueny Kovtun
of attraction-gravitation, a ‘small planet’ with its own place in the harmony of the universe. The non-representative canvases of Malevich did not break with the natural principle. Moreover, the painter goes on to qualify it himself as a ‘new pictorial realism.’[11] But its ‘natural character’ expresses itself at another level, both cosmic and planetary. The great merit of non-objective art was not only to give painters a new vision of the world but also to lay bare to them the first elements of the pictorial form, while going on to enrich the language of painting. Shklovsky expressed this well in talking about Malevich and his champions: ‘The Suprematists have done in art what a chemist does in medicine. They have cleared away the active part of the media.[12]’
At the beginning of 1917 Russian art offered a true range of contradictory movements and artistic trends. There were the declining Itinerants, the World of Art, which had lost its guiding role, while the Jack of Diamonds group (also known as the Knave of Diamonds), was quickly beginning to establish itself in the wake of Cezannism, Suprematism, Constructivism and Analytical Art. To characterise the post-revolutionary Avant-Garde, we will only address the essential phenomena of art and the principle events in the world of painting, focusing less on the work of painters than on the processes taking place in art at that time and on the issues raised by the great masters, who represent art’s summit at the time.
Ivan Puni, Still Life with Letters. The Spectrum of the Refugees, 1919.
Oil on canvas, 124 × 127 cm.
Private collection.
Olga Rozanova, Non-Objective Composition (Suprematism), 1916.
Oil on canvas, 102 × 94 cm.
Museum of Visual Arts, Yekaterinburg.
Soon after the October Revolution, a group of young painters gathered at the Institute of Artistic Culture (IZO), the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment (Narkompros), directed by Anatoly Lunatcharsky. For them the Revolution signified the total and complete renewal of all life’s establishments, a liberation from all that was antiquated, outdated and unjust. Art, they thought, must play an essential role in this process of purification. ‘The thunder of the October canons helped us become innovative,’ wrote Malevich during these days. ‘We have come to clean the personality from academic accessories, to cauterise in the brain the mildew of the past and to re-establish time, space, cadence, rhythm and movement, the foundations of today.’[13]
The young painters wanted to democratise art, make it unfold in the squares and streets, making it an efficient force in the revolutionary transformation of life. ‘Let paintings (colours) glow like sparklers in the squares and the streets, from house to house, praising, ennobling the eyes (the taste) of the passer-by.’[14] wrote Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vassily Kamensky and David Burliuk. The first attempts to ‘take art out’ into the streets were made in Moscow. On 15 March 1918, three paintings by David Burliuk were hung from the windows of a building situated at the corner of Kuznetsky Most street and the Neglinnaya alleyway. Interpreted as a new act of mischief by the Futurists, one could already see the near future in this action. In 1918, Suprematism left the artists’ studios and for the first time was brought into the streets and squares of Petrograd, translated in an original way in the decorative paintings of Ivan Puni, Xenia Bogouslavskaia, Vladimir Lebedev, Vladimir Kozlinsky, Nathan Altman and Pavel Mansurov. The panel painted by Kolinsky, destined for the Liteyny Bridge, was characterised by simple and lapidary forms, an image rich in meaning, without unintentional or secondary lines. The artist knew how to construct an image with few but pronounced mixes of colours: the deep blue of the Neva River, the dark silhouettes of war ships, the red flags of the demonstration that march along the quay. The watercolours of Kolinsky are not only decorative and joyful, but also characterised by an authentic monumentality. With a minimum use of forms and colours, the work acquires a maximum emotional charge.
The sketches of Puni, Lebedev and Bogouslavskaia reflect strong Suprematist influences. In these initial experiences, however, the painters conceived the principles of Suprematism in a somewhat ‘simplistic’ way, seeing it from a decorative and colour point of view only as a new procedure in plane organisation. They did not grasp the intimate sense of this movement and its philosophical roots.
Mikhail Matiushin, Movements in Space, 1922.
Oil on canvas, 124 × 168 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
The ROSTA Windows (Russian Telegraph Agency) of Petrograd
In 1920–1921, the influence of Suprematism would go on to transform the revolutionary poster, created by Kolinsky and Lebedev. The first ROSTA Windows (Russian Telegraph Agency) appeared in Moscow at the end of 1919. Mayakovsky would also take an active role in their creation. According to the act signed by Plato Kerjentsev and Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vladimir Kolinsky was designated as the head of the Painting section of the ROSTA in Petrograd. He involved his friend Vladimir Lebedev, along with Lev Brodaty, in the creation and design of posters. The difficulties the young painters encountered consisted mainly of not taking as their model posters pre-dating the Revolution, as these were considered to be of mediocre artistic level; their resemblance to caricatures from newspapers, magazines, or vignettes did not help. The young ROSTA painters had an entirely different notion of the poster. They saw it as an art of great influence, simple and constructive from the visual point of view, and also impressive by its monumental size.
In two years work, a thousand posters were created, of which today only a few dozen remain. Two painters – Kolinsky and Lebedev – played a determining role in the creation of the ROSTA Windows, for they made the vast majority of the posters in which they succeeded in creating an original style typical of Petrograd. The ROSTA Windows were reproduced in large numbers. On certain proofs, the following notes have been conserved: ‘Print 2000 copies’ or ‘Print maximum (1500 to 2000).’ Of course, the artists were unable to colour such a number of prints themselves. They provided the models from which assistants coloured the whole print run in. The linocuts were painted with pure, bright aniline colours. The addition of colour was made freely, in an improvised manner. One single poster, therefore, had several variants. The colour was put not only within the contours of the drawing but, like in the lubok (popular naive Russian imagery), was often overlapping. This technical particularity, unavoidable in mass production, gave the posters the charm of a handmade work, although a printing press was obviously used in the process. Although the posters of the ROSTA are characterised by the unity of visual principles, they nevertheless reflect the individual artistic talents of Kolinsky and Lebedev. The two young painters were trained at the same school; they had a passion for Cubism, which can be seen in many of their posters. But Kolinsky is softer, more lyrical than his colleague who is more caustic and brutal. Kolinsky is demonstrative and open in the expression of his feelings. Lebedev is more severe, more conventional, and more constructive. But he succeeds better than Kolinsky in ‘engraving’ his forms. The influence of Suprematism is often seen in these works. The posters of Lebedev are visual formulas in their own style, from which nothing can be taken away or added.
Kazimir Malevich, The Principles of Mural Painting: Vitebsk, 1919.
Watercolour, gouache and Indian ink on paper, 34 × 24.8 cm.
Private collection.
Ivan Puni, Litejny (drawing of the handbill Litejny), 1918.
Indian ink and watercolour on paper, 38.3 × 34.4 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
The Sevodnia Artel
One must also mention the Artel of artists that existed in Petrograd in 1918
Sub-heading of Malevich’s brochure ‘From Cubism to Suprematism’, published in 1915.
V. Shklovsky, ‘Space in Art and the Suprematists’,
A. Mayakovsky,