During the years 1915-32, Moscow and Petrograd (from 1924, Leningrad) witnessed revolutions in art and politics that changed the course of Modernist art and modern history. Though the great revolution in art - the radical formal innovations constituted by Vladimir Tatlins "material assemblages" and Kazimir Malevich's Suprematism - in fact preceed the political revolution by several years, the full weight of the new expressive possibilities was felt only after, and to a large extent because of the social upheavals of February and October 1917. As avant-garde artists, armed with new insights into form and materials, sought to realize the utopian aims of the Bolshevik Revolution, art and life seemed to merge. In this volume, which accompanies the largest exhibition ever mounted at the Guggenheim Museum, twenty-one essays by eminent scholars from Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States explore the activity of the Russian and Soviet avant-garde in all its diversity and complexity. These essays trace the work of Malevich's Unovis (Affirmers of the New Art) collective in Vitebsk, which introduced Suprematism's all-encompassing geometries into the design of textiles, ceramics, and indeed whole environments; the postrevolutionary reform of art education and the creation of Moscow's Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic-Technical Workshops), where the formal and analytical princples of the avant-garde were the basis of instruction; the debates over a "proletarian art" and the transition to Constructivism, "production art," and the "artist-constructor"; the organization of new artist-administered "museums of artistic culture"; the "third path" in non-objective art taken by Mikhail Larionov; the return to figuration in the mid-1920s by the young artists - and former students of the avant-garde - in Ost (the Society of Easel Painters); the debates among photographers, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, on the superiority of the fragmented or continuous image as a representation of the new socialist reality; book, porcelain, fabric, and stage design; and the evolution of a new architecture, from the experimental projects of Zhivskul'ptarkh (the Synthesis of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture Commission) to the multistage competition, in 1931-32, for the Palace of Soviets, which "proved" the inapplicability of a Modernist architecture to the Bolshevik Party's aspirations. More than seven hundred of the finest examples of Russian and Soviet avant-garde art are reproduced here in full color. Drawn from public and private collections worldwide - notably, from Baku, Kiev, Moscow, Riga, Samara, St. Petersburg, and Tashkent in the former Soviet Union - these works are by such masters as Natan Al'tman, Il'ia Chashnik, Aleksandra Ekster, Gustav Klutsis, El Lissitzky, Liubov' Popova, Ol'ga Rozanova, Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, and the Vesnin brothers.

The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932

Arts & Photography

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt

State Tret'iakov Gallery

State Russian Museum

History & Criticism

Published to accompany an important exhibition, this richly illustrated volume outlines the link between the Pre-Raphaelite artists in Britain and the Expressionists on the Continent. It focuses on the important contribution made by artists in Germany to the European Symbolist movement as a whole, providing for the first time a much-needed comparison to developments in England and other countries worldwide.

Kingdom of the Soul: Symbolist Art in Germany, 1870-1920

Waldemarsudde (Museum : Djurgarden, Stockholm, Sweden)

Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Prestel Pub

Focusing on one of Matisse's greatest bodies of work and his last artistic creations, this flexi edition of essays and reproductions provides scholarship on this important period.

Henri Matisse: Drawing With Scissors : Masterpieces from the Late Years

Matisse, Henri

Nationalgalerie (Germany : East)

Offering a survey of international explorations and discoveries, this catalogue documents the effort to identify from a global perspective the position of photography in contemporary art. With an emphasis upon the many and diverse applications of photography as a form of artistic expression, the present volume also examines the medium's perceptual possibilities as well as a variety of both critical and playful approaches to them. Major themes: people and the environment, landscapes, cities; technology and civilization; communication - staged reality; cameraless photography, new approaches to historical photography - reflections on old pictorial worlds; photography as fiction; digital processing - virtual images of a non-existent reality; text and or in lieu of photography; bodyself-presentation - portraits; and installations - objectslarge formats.

Prospect: Photography in Contemporary Art

Frankfurter Kunstverein

Photography & Video

Edition Stemmle

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