Russian Avant-Garde. Art for a New World

“The fragile and exclusive art of porcelain turned out to be the best custodian of the living traditions of the Russian avant-garde and at the same time a democratic educator of the nation’s taste. The result is an elegant tale of the history of Russian art,” says Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage.

The exhibition is made up of more than 500 items. There are paintings and works of graphic art, printed publications, textiles and reconstructions of costumes made to the designs of avant-garde artists. A very special place in the exhibition is allotted to porcelain. That fragile, exquisite material – the “white gold” of the tsars – began speaking the language of a new era and became an embodiment of the ideas of Russian avant-garde artists.

The exhibition has been organized by the State Hermitage and includes items provided by the State Russian Museum, the Imperial Porcelain Factory joint-stock company and private collectors.

The avant-garde emerged in Russia in the early part of the 20th century. The pre-revolutionary period in the nation’s art is presented through the juxtaposition of the classic genres of porcelain from the Imperial Factory and paintings by leading avant-garde artists. The objects reflecting the officially accepted aesthetic include figurines of the peoples of Russia produced from Pavel Kamensky’s models; sculptures from Konstantin Rausch von Traubenberg’s History of the Russian Guards series; vases decorated with landscapes in the underglaze painting technique and articles featuring symbols of the Russian Empire. These are contrasted with paintings that demolish traditional views: Landscape. Dünaberg near Murnau (1913) and Sketch for Composition V (1911) by Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), one of the pioneers of Abstractionism, as well as one of the chief symbols of the avant-garde, its most famous and emblematic work – the Black Square by Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935), the founder of Suprematism. On display in the hall are four more paintings by Malevich from the collection of the State Russian Museum: Suprematism (1915–16), Peasant in the Field (1928–29), Female Torso (1928–29) and Suprematism (1928–29).

The 1917 revolution changed the entire social structure. A time had come that permitted radical changes in all matters. Members of the avant-garde – revolutionaries in art – were accorded the opportunity to forge a new artistic environment, a fresh aesthetic in various fields of creativity, the chance to combine art with life and industry.

The main section of the display will be devoted to the evolution of design in the porcelain produced by the former imperial factory, allotted the status of a state-owned enterprise after the revolution. Under the leadership of Sergei Chekhonin (1878–1936), the factory’s artistic director from 1918, new agitation porcelain began to appear, extolling the ideas of the revolution. Plates, dishes and cups were embellished with the same slogans, aphorisms and pronouncements as appeared on posters and panels in the streets and squares. The exhibition features designs for the painted decoration of porcelain produced by representatives of a broad range of avant-garde tendencies: Ivan Alexeyev, Nathan Altman, Veniamin Belkin, Lev Bruni, Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Kozlinsky, Nikolai Lapshin, Vladimir Lebedev, Ivan Puni (Jean Pugny), Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Rudolf Wilde, Iosif Shkolnik and others.

Suprematist porcelain is presented in a separate block. Kazimir Malevich’s Teapot and Half-Cup became symbols of the avant-garde in porcelain. The celebrated Black Square served as an emblem for Malevich’s pupils. Nikolai Suyetin (1897–1954) and Ilya Chashnik (1902–1927) used that device to mark their works as they gave brilliant expression to the concept of Suprematism through their own original works. As in painting, the Suprematists’ works in porcelain went through several stages of artistic transformation – from decorative abstract compositions to figurative images and Suprematist ornamentation.

The style of 1930s porcelain, which reflected the most significant events in the life of the Soviet Union, developed under the influence of the Suprematist Nikolai Suyetin, who became the factory’s artistic director late in 1932. Those years saw the arrival at the State Porcelain Factory named after M.V. Lomonosov of a new, young generation of artists that included Mikhail Mokh, Ivan Riznich, Liubov Blak, Tamara Bezpalova-Mikhaleva and Liudmila Protopopova.

When decorating porcelain, these artists tended towards a graphic manner and a certain degree of stylization, giving preference to generalized shapes and bright, contrasting colours. The themes that they tackled were current and topical for the majority of Soviet art forms and were an element of ideological propaganda. The theme of forcing the pace of the country’s industrial development, for example, is explored in the sparingly coloured decoration of Liudmila Protopopova’s Industrial service (1931). It is possible to detect the influence of Suprematism in Mikhail Mokh’s painting of the Metal service (1930), – the precise proportions, the effective contrast of colours, the geometricized figures of the workers. Porcelain sculpture of the late 1920s and 1930s features representative personages of the period: Worker with a Hammer and Female Komsomol Member with a Book (both 1931) by Sergei Kvashnin and Reaper (1933) by Olga Manuilova. In her sculpture Activists (Workers’ Faculty Students) (1930), Natalia Danko gives an interpretation of a subject connected with one of the chief priorities of the period – the drive to teach the whole population to read and to expand education. Propaganda encouraging people to practise sport is the theme of Liubov Blak’s decoration of the Athletes service (1936), as well as works by other artists.

The avant-garde, which had become a living heritage for artists working at the porcelain factory, came back into demand in the production of the Thaw era in the 1960s, in the shapes and decoration of everyday articles in the new modern style, when Malevich’s pupils Anna Leporskaya and Eduard Krimmer were working at the factory. The exhibition includes items from the Festive service and the Jubilee vase with shapes and decoration by Eduard Krimmer and the Leningrad service with shapes by Anna Leporskaya, as well as other works.

Avant-garde traditions would manifest themselves in porcelain pieces produced in the 1990s and into the new millennium, and in the works of present-day porcelain artists.

Soviet agitation textiles occupy a prominent place in the history of decorative art worldwide. In the 1920s and 1930s, the mills of Moscow, Leningrad, Ivanovo, Serpukhov and other centres produced fabrics with pictorial subjects and ornamental motifs that reflected the political and socio-economic transformations of Soviet Russia. In the exhibition, it is possible to see examples of textiles devoted to the industrialization and electrification of the country (the Industry cotton fabric imitating wool, and the Electrification chintz), to industrial processes (the Paint Mill fabric), the revitalized life of the Soviet countryside (Tractor chintz, Tractors flannel), scientific and technical progress (Aeroplanes in Flight flannel, Rolling Stock chintz) and more. A distinctive feature of the fabrics with thematic or agitation designs was the innovative character of compositions in which the influence of avant-garde art can again be detected. Many patterns presented bright and bold combinations of colours, while tending towards abstraction that turned the design into a visual puzzle.

This section of the display is supplemented by reconstructions of costumes made to the designs of the avant-garde artists Alexander Rodchenko (1891–1956) and Varvara Stepanova (1894–1958), created by the present-day designer Denis Kazantsev.

The diversity of the creative individuals making up the avant-garde also found expression in book art. The works of this country’s artists in the early decades of the 20th century in book design and in the realms of printed and applied graphic art bore common features of a many-faceted era and became a striking and distinctive phenomenon.

The exhibition has been prepared by the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory, a department of the State Hermitage.

The exhibition curator and author of the concept is Anna Vladimirovna Ivanova, head of the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory.

The exhibition can be visited by all holders of tickets to the Main Museum Complex.