Russian Avant-Garde. Evgueny Kovtun
at the house of Vera Ermolaeva. One could see there, for instance, Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky.[15] These meetings lead to the formation of a group of painters and writers to co-create books, mainly for children. With this objective, the Sevodnia Artel was the prototype of the Detguiz (children’s book publishers) in Leningrad. The painters and writers did everything themselves, from the creation of the book to its sale.
The Artel books were not dense, 4 pages in all. They were printed in limited editions of one hundred and twenty five. Covers and illustrations were made from linocuts. Some of the prints were coloured by the artist himself, with colours varying from one book to another, each copy becoming unique and acquiring the charm of the work of an ‘artisan’. Through the monumental character of her compositions, Vera Ermolaeva managed to reproduce on the cover of Pioneers, by Whitman, the free rhythm of the verse of the great American poet. She used the same visual power for the cover of Nathan Vengrov’s book, Today. The sitting character is highlighted with expressivity in the foreground, on a background of the city’s rickety buildings. The lapidary simplicity of form and the geometrical facets show that the art of this painter had contact with Cubism. The title and name of the author are included in the image and integrated into the composition, a common practice. Here Ermolaeva followed the tradition of painted signs, in which she was particularly interested at the time. Among the best and most interesting books published by Cartel were: The Infant Jesus, by Esenin, Pine Branches, by Vengrov (drawings by Turova), and 8 Hours and a Quarter, by Annenkov (drawings by the author). The work of the Sevodnia Artel was short-lived. In autumn 1919, the Visual Arts department of the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment sent Ermolaeva to Vitebsk, and the Artel closed its doors.
The VKhUTEMAS [Higher Art and Technical Studios]
The Higher Art and Technical Studios (VKhUTEMAS) in Moscow became the centre from which the most innovative art radiated. Punin, returning to Moscow in February 1919, noted: ‘Suprematism poured out in an explosion of colour throughout Moscow. Signs, exhibitions, cafes – all is Suprematism.’[16] It had to compete, of course, with Constructivism, which began with the counter-reliefs of Tatlin in the years before the Revolution. The painter wrote: ‘Having constructed angular and central reliefs of a superior type,[17] I rejected as superfluous a whole series of ‘isms,’ the chronic disease of modern art.’[18] The Constructivists, giving up the aesthetic approach to creation, moved towards the creation of different and varied utilitarian objects. The functional rationality of an object became for them the equivalent of its artistic value. The rivalry between Tatlin and Malevich continued during the 1920s. ‘I don’t know when this started’ wrote Punin ‘but from what I remember they always shared the universe – the earth, the sky and interplanetary space – establishing their own sphere of influence. Generally, Tatlin kept the earth for himself, trying to send Malevich to research non-objectivity in the sky. Without giving up the planets, Malevich did not give up the earth either, judging, rightly, that it is also a planet and that it can therefore be non objective.’[19]
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky experienced a high level of creative activity during the years of the Revolution. He published articles and gave lectures; he was also one of the organisers of The Institute of Artistic Culture in Moscow (INKhUK). One of the first books published by the Visual Arts department of the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment was a monograph by the painter, W. Kandinsky. Ten years later, Kandinsky was purely and simply crossed out from Russian artistic culture and linked to German Expressionism. If, in the publication before the war of Masters of Art on Art, Kandinsky’s texts are part of the Russian section, in the last edition (1969) they are featured in the ‘German’ segment, the pretext being that his art would be an exotic flower in Russian soil. Justice must be restored. His pictorial experiments originated from popular Russian art, from the polychromy of the lubok, as the artist himself said. One can hardly find a painter at the beginning of the century that had such a strong interest and emotion for lubki as Kandinsky. Having heard that Nikolai Kulbin had sent him a lubok, The Last Judgement, Kandinsky wrote to him: ‘Truly, when I think about it, my heart beats faster.’[20] He tried to hunt out lubki each time he was in Moscow. The painter Mansurov talked about his explorations for lubki, often in the company of Larionov: ‘He and Kandinsky would roam the bazaars to dig out lubki painted by Mujiks. Bova Korolevich and the Tsar Saltan, and with them the angels and archangels, roughly painted in aniline from top to bottom: it was these objects and not Cezanne that were the source of everything.’[21] Kandinsky reproduced some lubki in the Blue Rider Almanac and was to organise in 1912, before Larionov, an exhibition of lubki at the Holtz Gallery in Munich. It was at the beginning of the 1890s that Kandinsky discovered the popular art of Russia. Having graduated in law at the University of Moscow (1892), he was sent by the government to Vologda to carry out a study on farming. It was there, in the country, that the ‘miracle’ occurred to him and became later, as he wrote, an element in his work. The impression of his first visit to an isba would stay with him for many years: ‘I remember clearly how I stopped on the threshold in front of this unexpected sight. The table, the benches, the enormous and imposing stove, the cupboards, the dressers, all were decorated with large multi-coloured ornaments. On the walls, ‘lubki’: a valiant character represented symbolically, battles, a song transmitted by colours. The end of the room was covered from top to bottom in painted and printed icons, in front of which a small red, night-light burned dimly; it seemed to withhold a secret, living by itself, a humble and proud star, whispering mysteriously. When I finally entered the room, the painting surrounded me from all sides and I entered into it.’[22] It is certainly in these early impressions that one can find one of the many sources in Kandinsky’s work.
Mikhail Larionov, A Cock, 1912.
Oil on canvas, 69 × 65 cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Mikhail Matiushin, Composition for Elena Guro’s Death, 1918.
Watercolour on paper, 27 × 38.1 cm.
Private collection.
Pavel Filonov, Faces, 1940.
Oil on paper, 64 × 56 cm.
The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.
The Struggle Against Gravity
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian poets and painters were deeply interested in a new issue in the theory of art, and this was reflected in a series of terms often used by the Avant-Garde: the ‘struggle against gravity’ (Petrov-Vodkin), the ‘distribution of weight in the system of weightlessness’ (Malevich), the ‘transformation of weight in weightlessness’ (Yudin). The idea of the struggle against gravity (‘visual weightlessness’) became one of the dominant artistic principles at the beginning of the century. The artists began to understand that a work of art is an independent world, whose essence is both spiritual and moral. This autonomous world, like any authentic work of art, acquired its specific characteristics at the beginning of the 20th century. Organised like the Universe, this world belonged entirely and equally to this universe, not only limited to the earth and its particular laws. These views were based on the philosophical system of Nikolai Fedorov.[23] Fedorov wrote in one of his articles: ‘When the earth was considered as the centre, we could be tranquil spectators who take appearance for reality, for the authentic; but as soon as this conviction disappeared, the central position of the thinking human being became the goal, the project.’[24] According
V. Shklovsky, ‘A Case at the production’,
N. Punin, ‘In Moscow (Letter)’,
The ‘Reliefs of superior type’, contrary to ordinary reliefs, are ‘non-objective’ constructions in volume, made in various materials.
V. Tatlin, ‘I reply to the Letter to the Futurists’,
N. Punin,
W. Kandinsky, Letter to N. Kulbin of 28th March 1912,
W. Kandinsky, Text by the artist, Moscow, 1918, p.28.
Nikolai Fiodorovich Fedorov (1828–1903) – librarian of the Roumiantsev Museum in Moscow, philosopher whose original ideas were very appreciated by Tolstoi, Dostoyevsky and V. Soloviov. His work was published posthumously by his followers under the title