The Avant-Garde: Russian Architecture in the Twenties (Architectural Design Profile)

Avant-Garde Modernism dominated the Russian architectural profession throughout the 1920s. Though severely limited by the disruptions of revolutions and civil war, the Avant-Garde has left behind it a body of theoretical work and a number of important completed projects that exerted a profound influence on pioneers of the Modern movement such as Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer. Too often reduced to a single, homogenous movement, Soviet Modernism is here presented in all its considerable diversity; with over 300 rarely seen contemporary photographs, and documents by leading Modernists such as Tatlin, Melkikov and Golosov. In a new essay, Catherine Cooke examines the pre-revolutionary origins of the Avant-Garde and highlights the numerous fissures and tensions that characterized the movement during its decade of greatest influence.