Soviet Nonconformist Art
Encyclopedia
The term Soviet Nonconformist Art refers to art
produced in the former Soviet Union
from 1953-1986 (after the death of Joseph Stalin
until the advent of Perestroika
and Glasnost
) outside of the rubric of Socialist Realism
. Other terms used to refer to this phenomenon are "unofficial art" or "underground art."
, expressionism
, and conceptual art
. Beginning in 1936, avant-garde artists who were unable or unwilling to adapt to the new policy were forced out of their positions, and often either murdered or sent to the gulag
, as part of Stalin's Great Purge
s. Vladimir Sterligov, a student of Kazimir Malevich, along with two of his own students, Alexander Baturin and Oleg Kartashov, as well as Vera Ermolaeva and her students Marusya Kazanskaya and Pavel Basmanov were arrested in December, 1934 and taken by train to Kazakhstan. Sterligov spent five years in prison outside Karaganda, while Ermolaeva disappeared forever. Sterligov's student, Alexander Baturin, spent a total of 32 years in prison.
, referred to in Russia as The Great Patriotic War, Party
resolutions were passed in 1946 and 1948, by Andrei Zhdanov
, chief of the Propaganda Administration formally denouncing Western cultural influences at the start of the Cold War
. Art students such as Ülo Sooster
, an Estonia
n who later became important to the Moscow nonconformist movement, were sent to Siberia
n prison camps. The nonconformist artist Boris Sveshnikov
also spent time in a Soviet labor camp
. Oleg Tselkov was expelled from art school for 'formalism
' in 1955, which from the viewpoint of the Party might have constituted an act of treason.
in 1953, and Nikita Khrushchev
's subsequent denunciation of his crimes during his Secret Speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 created a "thaw"; a liberal atmosphere wherein artists had more freedom to create nonsanctioned work without fearing repercussions. Furthermore, Stalin's cult of personality
was recognized as detrimental, and within weeks many paintings and busts bearing his likeness were removed from public places. Artists such as Alexander Gerasimov
, who had made their careers painting idealized portraits of Stalin, were forced out of their official positions, as they had become embarrassing to the new leadership. However, despite increased tolerance, the parameters of Socialist Realism still hadn't changed, and therefore, artists still had to tread lightly.
regarding the function of art in society. However, this altercation had the unintended effect of fomenting unofficial art as a movement. Artists could no longer hold delusions that the state would recognize their art, yet the climate had become friendly and open enough that a coherent organization had formed. Additionally, punishments for unofficial artists became less severe; they were denied admittance to the union instead of being murdered.
As a "movement" nonconformist art was stylistically diverse. However, in the post-thaw era its function and role in society became clear. As the eminent Russian curator, author and museum director Joseph Bakstein writes,
and Perestroika
were the policies that led to the demise of the USSR in 1991. The nonconformist movement, deprived of a host body, suffered demise as well. However, two other factors sealed the fate of nonconformism. The first was the 1988 auction of modern and contemporary Russian art in Moscow by Sotheby's
. The auction was only open to foreigners who could pay in British Pounds, which signified the economic fragility of the Soviet Union, the end of its xenophobia, and the beginning of the forces of capitalism that control the art market. The second factor was diaspora - many artists had already emigrated, beginning as early as the late-1970s and continuing throughout the 1980s.
include: Ilya Kabakov
, Oleg Vassiliev, Erik Bulatov
, Komar and Melamid
, Genia Chef
, Leonid Sokov
, Viktor Pivovarov
, Ülo Sooster
, Boris Sveshnikov
, Vladimir Yakovlev, Anatoly Zverev
, Lydia Masterkova, Vladimir Nemukhin
, Ernst Neizvestny
, Oscar Rabin
, Vladimir Yankilevsky
, Eduard Steinberg
, Lev Kropivnitsky, Valentina Kropivnitskaia, Alexander Yulikov, Andrei Grositsky, Vasily Sitnikov
, Dmitrii Krasnopevtsev, Leonid Lamm, Igor Shelkovsky, from Leningrad: Alek Rapoport
, Timur Novikov
, Olga Kisseleva
, Grisha Bruskin
, Afrika (Sergei Bugaev)
, Oleg Tselkov, Anatoly Basin, Alexei Khvostenko
, Klever (Valery), Yuri Gourov, Alexander Ney
, Edouard Zelenine from Siberia.
, Nikolai Vechtomov and the poets Vsevolod Nekrasov, Genrikh Sapgir
, and Igor Kholin. This group was not related due to aesthetic concerns, but due to "their shared search for a new sociocultural identity." If one generalization may be made of this group's aesthetic preferences and general worldview it is that, "the aestheticization of misery is precisely what distinguishes the representatives of the de-classed communal intelligentsia of the thaw era from their predecessors (the Socialist Realists), who created a paradisiac image of history."
Many members of the Lianozovo group worked in an abstract style. The 1957 thaw resulted in the discovery of Western artistic practices and historical Russian avant-garde traditions by young Soviet artists. Artists began experimenting with abstraction, as it was the antithesis of Socialist Realism. However, the fallout from the Manezh exhibition, in 1962, caused restrictions to be enforced once again. The new restrictions could not however, curtail what the young artists had learned during the five year interlude. Additionally, Victor Tupitsyn points out that the 1960s mark an era of "decommunalization" in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev worked to improve housing conditions, and a consequence of this was that artists began to get studios of their own, or shared spaces with like-minded colleagues. If one is to follow Virginia Woolf
's thesis that A Room of One's Own
is the primary necessary factor for the proliferation of creative work, then it is easy to see how nonconformist art began flourishing at this time in the USSR.
Officially, those in the Lianozovo group were members of the Moscow Union of Graphic Artists, working in the applied and graphic arts. As such, they were not permitted to hold painting exhibitions, as that fell under the domain of the Artists' Union. Consequently, apartment exhibitions and literary salons began at this time as a means of publicly exhibiting. However, the Lianozovo group in particular was often harassed by Soviet officials as they were vigilant in pursuing public exhibitions of their work. In an attempt to circumvent the law, the Lianozovo group proposed an open air exhibition in 1974, inviting dozens of other nonconformist artists also to exhibit. The result was the demolition of the exhibition by bulldozers and water cannons, for which reason the exhibition is still known as the Bulldozer Exhibition
.
, Ülo Sooster
, Eduard Shteinberg, Erik Bulatov
, Oleg Vassiliev, Viktor Pivovarov
, Vladimir Yankilevsky
, and Ernst Neizvestny
. The artists' studios were also used as venues to show and exchange ideas about unofficial art. Like their colleagues in the Lianozovo group, the majority of visual artists who were part of the Sretensky Boulevard Group were admitted to the Union of Moscow Graphic Artists. This allowed the artists to work officially as book illustrators and graphic designers, which provided them with studio space, materials, and time to work on their own projects. Although they shared the same type of official career, the Sretensky group is not stylistically homogenous. The name merely denotes the community that they formed as a result of working in close proximity to each other.
school. This movement arose in the 1970s to describe the identity of the contemporary Russian artist in opposition to the government. As Joseph Bakstein explains, "The creation of this nonconformist tradition was impelled by the fact that an outsider in the Soviet empire stood alone against a tremendous state machine, a great Leviathan that threatened to engulf him. To preserve one's identity in this situation, one had to create a separate value system, including a system of aesthetic values."
The aesthetic language of Moscow Conceptualism is self-conscious and often deals with the quotidian. Consequently, these artists incorporated their experiences of Soviet life into their art in a manner that was not overtly negative, but at varying times, nostalgic, disinterested, wry, and subtle. Erik Bulatov explains that conceptualist art is, "a rebellion of man against the everyday reality of life... a picture interests me as some kind of system... opening into the space of my everyday existence." By exposing the underlying mechanisms of Soviet society and interpersonal interaction, the artists created a very real and relatable artistic language to rival the "official" propagandistic language of the government.
This group includes Ilya Kabakov
, Erik Bulatov
, Oleg Vassiliev, Komar and Melamid
, Andrei Monastyrsky and also broadly encompasses the Sots
artists and the Collective Actions group, which were both influential in the construction of Russian conceptualist art. The term Moscow Conceptualism is sometimes used interchangeably with post-modernism, and is sometimes meant to include all of the nonconformist artists of the "Soviet generation." This term applies to the artists who were born in the 1930s and 1940s, and grew up under Stalinism
. This group came of age in the 1960s and took nonconformist art in a new direction in the 1970s.
, where Chemiakin worked as gallery assistant. The official name of the exhibition was Exhibition of the artist-workers of the economic part of the Hermitage: Towards the 200th anniversary of Hermitage and it included the work of Chemiakin, V. Kravchenko, V. Uflyand, V. Ovchinnikov and O. Liagatchev. Opening on March 30–31, it was closed by the authorities on April 1. The Hermitage director, Mikhail Artamonov
, was removed from his post.
In 1967 the Petersburg Group Manifesto was written and signed by Chemiakin, O.Liagatchev, E. Yesaulenko and V. Ivanov. Ivanov and Chemiakin had previously developed the idea of Metaphysical Synthesism, which proposed creating a new form of icon painting through the study of religious art across the ages, The essay, Métaphysique Synthétisme included illustrations to the works of E.T.A. Hoffman and Crime and Punishment
by Fyodor M. Dostoevsky.
A. Vasiliev and the miniature painter V. Makarenko joined the group later.
Four years after the founding of the group, in 1971, Chemiakin emigrated to France, and later the United States.
Liagatchev, until his emigration to Paris in 1975, and Vasiliev continued to participate in exhibitions of non-conformist artists in Leningrad at the Gaza Cultural Center (1974) and the Nevsky Cultural Center (1975). Liagatchev's work in this period includes: Kafka, Intimeniy XX (1973) and Composition - Canon (1975). The group finally became defunct in 1979, ceasing to have joint exhibitions.
was one of the leaders of St. Petersburg art in the 1980s. In 1982 his theory of "Zero Object" acted as one of the foundations of Russian conceptual art. In the 1990s he founded neo-academism.
St. Petersburg artists Igor Polyakov
and Alexander Rappoport formed the underground art group Battle Elephants
in 1984.
Olga Kisseleva
was one of the leaders of Russian New media art
.
Another important St. Petersburg artist who emerged in the 1980s was Afrika (Sergei Bugaev)
.
, Alexander Anufriev, Valentin Khrushch, Lev Meshberg, Victor Mariniuk, Lyudmila Yastreb, Stanislav Sytchev, Evgeni Rakhmanin, Ruslan Makoev, Andrei Antoniuk and others. These artists continued to show their art privately in spite of the constant harassment from the authorities and the oppression and hatred coming from the majority of the officially recognised artists. They had close connections with the Moscow centres of the underground art movement and were participating in the apartment exhibitions of nonconformist art in Moscow and in Leningrad. They also invited their Russian colleagues to visit Odessa and to take part in their apartment exhibitions there.
The following artists took an active part in the unofficial, so called "apartment exhibitions" in the 1970s in Odessa. Some of them participated in the "apartment exhibitions" in Moscow as well. Valentin Altanietz (1936–1995) Andrey Antoniuk, Alexander Anufriev, Valery Basanietz, Alexei Bokatov, Igor Bozhko, Valentin Khrushch (1943–2005), Michail Kowalski, Ruslan Makoev, Victor Mariniuk, Lev Meshberg, Volodymyr Naumez, Vasiliy Sad
, Nikolay Novikov, Victor Pavlov, Valery Parfenenko, Evgeni Rakhmanin, Viktor Risovich, Sergei Savchenko, Vitaly Sazonov, Valentin Shapavlenko, Yuri Shurevich (1937–1997), Oleg Sokolov, Nikolai Stepanov, (sculptor) (1937–2003), Alexander Stovbur, Vladimir Strelnikov
, Stanislav Sytchov (1937–2003), Vladimir Tziupko, Alexander Voloshinov, Ludmilla Yastreb (1945–1980), Anna Zilberman.
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
produced in the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
from 1953-1986 (after the death of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
until the advent of Perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
and Glasnost
Glasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
) outside of the rubric of Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...
. Other terms used to refer to this phenomenon are "unofficial art" or "underground art."
1917-1932
From the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 until 1932, the historical Russian avant-garde flourished and strived to appeal to the proletariat. However, in 1932 Stalin's government took control of the arts with the publication of "On the Reconstruction of Literary-Artistic Organizations"; a decree that put artists' unions under the control of the Communist Party. Two years later, Stalin instituted a policy that unified aesthetic and ideological objectives, which was called Socialist Realism, broadly defined as art that was, "socialist in content and realist in form." Moreover, the new policy defined four categories of unacceptable art: political art, religious art, erotic art, and "formalistic" art, which included abstractionAbstraction
Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....
, expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
, and conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
. Beginning in 1936, avant-garde artists who were unable or unwilling to adapt to the new policy were forced out of their positions, and often either murdered or sent to the gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
, as part of Stalin's Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
s. Vladimir Sterligov, a student of Kazimir Malevich, along with two of his own students, Alexander Baturin and Oleg Kartashov, as well as Vera Ermolaeva and her students Marusya Kazanskaya and Pavel Basmanov were arrested in December, 1934 and taken by train to Kazakhstan. Sterligov spent five years in prison outside Karaganda, while Ermolaeva disappeared forever. Sterligov's student, Alexander Baturin, spent a total of 32 years in prison.
End of World War II - 1953
In the wake of World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, referred to in Russia as The Great Patriotic War, Party
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
resolutions were passed in 1946 and 1948, by Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Zhdanov
Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov was a Soviet politician.-Life:Zhdanov enlisted with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1915 and was promoted through the party ranks, becoming the All-Union Communist Party manager in Leningrad after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934...
, chief of the Propaganda Administration formally denouncing Western cultural influences at the start of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. Art students such as Ülo Sooster
Ülo Sooster
Ülo Ilmar Sooster was an Estonian nonconformist painter .-References:...
, an Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
n who later became important to the Moscow nonconformist movement, were sent to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
n prison camps. The nonconformist artist Boris Sveshnikov
Boris Sveshnikov
Boris Sveshnikov is a Russian, Soviet non-conformist painter. At the age of 19 in the year 1946, he was studying at the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. However, he was falsely accused of engaging in terrorist activity and was interned in a Gulag labor camp by the Soviet government...
also spent time in a Soviet labor camp
Labor camp
A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
. Oleg Tselkov was expelled from art school for 'formalism
Formalism (art)
In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...
' in 1955, which from the viewpoint of the Party might have constituted an act of treason.
1953 (the death of Stalin) - 1962
The death of Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
in 1953, and Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
's subsequent denunciation of his crimes during his Secret Speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 created a "thaw"; a liberal atmosphere wherein artists had more freedom to create nonsanctioned work without fearing repercussions. Furthermore, Stalin's cult of personality
Cult of personality
A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are usually associated with dictatorships...
was recognized as detrimental, and within weeks many paintings and busts bearing his likeness were removed from public places. Artists such as Alexander Gerasimov
Alexander Gerasimov
Alexander Mikhaylovich Gerasimov was a leading proponent of Socialist Realism in the visual arts, and painted Joseph Stalin and other Soviet leaders....
, who had made their careers painting idealized portraits of Stalin, were forced out of their official positions, as they had become embarrassing to the new leadership. However, despite increased tolerance, the parameters of Socialist Realism still hadn't changed, and therefore, artists still had to tread lightly.
1962 - mid-1970s
The "thaw" era ended quickly, when in 1962, Khrushchev attended the public Manezh exhibition at which several nonconformist artists were exhibiting. Khrushchev got into a public and now-famous argument with Ernst NeizvestnyErnst Neizvestny
Ernst Iosifovich Neizvestny is a Russian sculptor. He currently lives and works in New York City. His last name in Russian literally means "unknown"....
regarding the function of art in society. However, this altercation had the unintended effect of fomenting unofficial art as a movement. Artists could no longer hold delusions that the state would recognize their art, yet the climate had become friendly and open enough that a coherent organization had formed. Additionally, punishments for unofficial artists became less severe; they were denied admittance to the union instead of being murdered.
As a "movement" nonconformist art was stylistically diverse. However, in the post-thaw era its function and role in society became clear. As the eminent Russian curator, author and museum director Joseph Bakstein writes,
The duality of life in which the official perception of everyday reality is independent of the reality of the imagination leads to a situation where art plays a special role in society. In any culture, art is a special reality, but in the Soviet Union, art was doubly real precisely because it had no relation to reality. It was a higher reality.... The goal of nonconformism in art was to challenge the status of official artistic reality, to question it, to treat it with irony. Yet that was the one unacceptable thing. All of Soviet society rested on orthodoxy, and nonconformism was its enemy. That is why even the conditional and partial legalization of nonconformism in the mid-1970s was the beginning of the end of the Soviet regime.
Late 1970s - 1991
In the mid-1980s, GlasnostGlasnost
Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...
and Perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...
were the policies that led to the demise of the USSR in 1991. The nonconformist movement, deprived of a host body, suffered demise as well. However, two other factors sealed the fate of nonconformism. The first was the 1988 auction of modern and contemporary Russian art in Moscow by Sotheby's
Sotheby's
Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...
. The auction was only open to foreigners who could pay in British Pounds, which signified the economic fragility of the Soviet Union, the end of its xenophobia, and the beginning of the forces of capitalism that control the art market. The second factor was diaspora - many artists had already emigrated, beginning as early as the late-1970s and continuing throughout the 1980s.
Contributors to the movement
Notable Soviet Nonconformist artists from MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
include: Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov, Russian Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в , is a Russian-American conceptual artist of Jewish descent, born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. He worked for thirty years in Moscow, from the 1950s until the late 1980s. He now lives and works on Long Island...
, Oleg Vassiliev, Erik Bulatov
Erik Bulatov
Erik Bulatov is a Russian artist born in Sverdlovsk in 1933 and raised in Moscow. His father was a communist party official who died in World War II at Pskov, and his mother fled Poland at age 15 in support of the Russian Revolution. Bulatov's works are in the major public and private collections...
, Komar and Melamid
Komar and Melamid
Komar and Melamid is an artistic team made up of Russian-born American graphic artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid . In an artists’ statement they said that “Even if only one of us creates some of the projects and works, we usually sign them together...
, Genia Chef
Genia Chef
Genia Chef is a Russian artist living in Berlin, Germany. International Who's Who 2000 notes that before emigrating to the West in 1985 he was a member of Soviet Nonconformist Art circles in Moscow, a group that included, among others, Ilya Kabakov, Viktor Pivovarov, Anatoly Zverev and Semyon...
, Leonid Sokov
Leonid Sokov
Leonid Sokov is a Russian artist and sculptor. He lives and works in New York City.-Life and work:Sokov was born in Mikhalevo in the Tver region, Russia in 1941 and graduated from the Stroganov Institute now called the Moscow School of Art and Industry, in 1969. He emigrated to the United States...
, Viktor Pivovarov
Viktor Pivovarov
Viktor Pivovarov , along with Ilya Kabakov and Erik Bulatov, was one of the leading artists of the Moscow Conceptualist artistic movement of the 1960s and 1970s...
, Ülo Sooster
Ülo Sooster
Ülo Ilmar Sooster was an Estonian nonconformist painter .-References:...
, Boris Sveshnikov
Boris Sveshnikov
Boris Sveshnikov is a Russian, Soviet non-conformist painter. At the age of 19 in the year 1946, he was studying at the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. However, he was falsely accused of engaging in terrorist activity and was interned in a Gulag labor camp by the Soviet government...
, Vladimir Yakovlev, Anatoly Zverev
Anatoly Zverev
Anatoly Zverev was a Russian artist, a member of the non-conformist movement and a founder of Russian Expressionism in the 1960s. He spent all of his life in Moscow....
, Lydia Masterkova, Vladimir Nemukhin
Vladimir Nemukhin
Vladimir Nemukhin is a Russian artist. Nemukhin studied under the direction of Petr E. Sokolov and later Pavel Kuznezov)...
, Ernst Neizvestny
Ernst Neizvestny
Ernst Iosifovich Neizvestny is a Russian sculptor. He currently lives and works in New York City. His last name in Russian literally means "unknown"....
, Oscar Rabin
Oscar Rabin
Oscar Rabin was a Latvian born English bandleader and musician. He was notable for being the musical director of the Oscar Rabin Band....
, Vladimir Yankilevsky
Vladimir Yankilevsky
Vladimir Borisovich Yankilevsky is a Russian artist known mostly for his participation in the Soviet Nonconformist Art movement of the 1960s through the 1980s...
, Eduard Steinberg
Eduard Steinberg
Eduard Arkadevich Steinberg , born in Moscow 3 March 1937, is a Russian painter, philosopher and dissident.-Personal life:Steinberg is the son of poet and author Arkady Steinberg....
, Lev Kropivnitsky, Valentina Kropivnitskaia, Alexander Yulikov, Andrei Grositsky, Vasily Sitnikov
Vasily Sitnikov
Vasily Yakovlevich Sitnikov was a Russian painter. He was one of the most vivid “landmark” figures of the post-war Soviet Nonconformist Art of Russia, and a living legend in Moscow artistic milieu....
, Dmitrii Krasnopevtsev, Leonid Lamm, Igor Shelkovsky, from Leningrad: Alek Rapoport
Rapoport, Alek (Aleksandr Vladimirovich)
Alek Rapoport was a Russian Nonconformist artist, art theorist and teacher.- Biography and creative work :...
, Timur Novikov
Timur Novikov
Timur Petrovich Novikov was a Russian philosopher, graphic artist, designer, painter, art theorist and curator...
, Olga Kisseleva
Olga Kisseleva
Olga Kisseleva is a Russian artist. Olga Kisseleva works mainly in installation, science and media art. Her work employs various media, including video, immersive virtual reality, the Web, wireless technology, performance, large-scale art installations and interactive exhibitions.- Biography :As...
, Grisha Bruskin
Grisha Bruskin
Grisha Bruskin is a Russian Jewish painter, active until 1989 in the Soviet Union, and since 1989 in the United States....
, Afrika (Sergei Bugaev)
Afrika (Sergei Bugaev)
Afrika is a Russian artist.He was born in Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea, and in the early 1980s moved to Saint Petersburg, where he met and became friends with leaders of the art scene there, such as the painter Timur Novikov and musician Boris Grebenshchikov...
, Oleg Tselkov, Anatoly Basin, Alexei Khvostenko
Alexei Khvostenko
Alexei Khvostenko , November 14, 1940 – November 30, 2004, was a Russian avant-garde poet, singer-songwriter, artist and sculptor. Khvostenko is also frequently referred to by the nickname Khvost , meaning "tail".-Biography:...
, Klever (Valery), Yuri Gourov, Alexander Ney
Alexander Ney
Alexander Ney is an American sculptor and painter. He immigrated to the United States in 1974 and has since lived and worked in New York...
, Edouard Zelenine from Siberia.
Moscow Artists' Groups
There were many artistic groups and movements that were active in the Soviet Union after the period of the thaw. They can be difficult to classify because often they were not related due to stylistic objectives, but geographical proximity. Furthermore, participation in these groups was fluid as the community of nonconformist artists in Moscow was relatively small and close-knit.Lianozovo
One of the most rebellious groups to emerge from this period is called Lianozovo, after the small village outside Moscow where most of the artists lived and worked. The members of this group were: Evgenii Kropivnitsky, Olga Potapova, Valentina Kropivnitskaia, Oskar Rabin, Lev Kropivnitsky, Lydia Masterkova, Vladimir NemukhinVladimir Nemukhin
Vladimir Nemukhin is a Russian artist. Nemukhin studied under the direction of Petr E. Sokolov and later Pavel Kuznezov)...
, Nikolai Vechtomov and the poets Vsevolod Nekrasov, Genrikh Sapgir
Genrikh Sapgir
Genrikh Sapgir was a Russian poet and fiction writer.-Biography:He was born in Biysk to a family of a Moscow engineer on a business trip. The family returned to Moscow fairly soon....
, and Igor Kholin. This group was not related due to aesthetic concerns, but due to "their shared search for a new sociocultural identity." If one generalization may be made of this group's aesthetic preferences and general worldview it is that, "the aestheticization of misery is precisely what distinguishes the representatives of the de-classed communal intelligentsia of the thaw era from their predecessors (the Socialist Realists), who created a paradisiac image of history."
Many members of the Lianozovo group worked in an abstract style. The 1957 thaw resulted in the discovery of Western artistic practices and historical Russian avant-garde traditions by young Soviet artists. Artists began experimenting with abstraction, as it was the antithesis of Socialist Realism. However, the fallout from the Manezh exhibition, in 1962, caused restrictions to be enforced once again. The new restrictions could not however, curtail what the young artists had learned during the five year interlude. Additionally, Victor Tupitsyn points out that the 1960s mark an era of "decommunalization" in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev worked to improve housing conditions, and a consequence of this was that artists began to get studios of their own, or shared spaces with like-minded colleagues. If one is to follow Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
's thesis that A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928...
is the primary necessary factor for the proliferation of creative work, then it is easy to see how nonconformist art began flourishing at this time in the USSR.
Officially, those in the Lianozovo group were members of the Moscow Union of Graphic Artists, working in the applied and graphic arts. As such, they were not permitted to hold painting exhibitions, as that fell under the domain of the Artists' Union. Consequently, apartment exhibitions and literary salons began at this time as a means of publicly exhibiting. However, the Lianozovo group in particular was often harassed by Soviet officials as they were vigilant in pursuing public exhibitions of their work. In an attempt to circumvent the law, the Lianozovo group proposed an open air exhibition in 1974, inviting dozens of other nonconformist artists also to exhibit. The result was the demolition of the exhibition by bulldozers and water cannons, for which reason the exhibition is still known as the Bulldozer Exhibition
Bulldozer Exhibition
Bulldozer Exhibition was an unofficial art exhibition on a vacant lot in the Belyayevo urban forest by Moscow avant-garde artists on September 15, 1974...
.
Sretensky Boulevard
A group of artists that had studios on and around Sretensky Boulevard, Moscow, became a loosely associated like-minded community in the late 1960s. The members of this group were: Ilya KabakovIlya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov, Russian Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в , is a Russian-American conceptual artist of Jewish descent, born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. He worked for thirty years in Moscow, from the 1950s until the late 1980s. He now lives and works on Long Island...
, Ülo Sooster
Ülo Sooster
Ülo Ilmar Sooster was an Estonian nonconformist painter .-References:...
, Eduard Shteinberg, Erik Bulatov
Erik Bulatov
Erik Bulatov is a Russian artist born in Sverdlovsk in 1933 and raised in Moscow. His father was a communist party official who died in World War II at Pskov, and his mother fled Poland at age 15 in support of the Russian Revolution. Bulatov's works are in the major public and private collections...
, Oleg Vassiliev, Viktor Pivovarov
Viktor Pivovarov
Viktor Pivovarov , along with Ilya Kabakov and Erik Bulatov, was one of the leading artists of the Moscow Conceptualist artistic movement of the 1960s and 1970s...
, Vladimir Yankilevsky
Vladimir Yankilevsky
Vladimir Borisovich Yankilevsky is a Russian artist known mostly for his participation in the Soviet Nonconformist Art movement of the 1960s through the 1980s...
, and Ernst Neizvestny
Ernst Neizvestny
Ernst Iosifovich Neizvestny is a Russian sculptor. He currently lives and works in New York City. His last name in Russian literally means "unknown"....
. The artists' studios were also used as venues to show and exchange ideas about unofficial art. Like their colleagues in the Lianozovo group, the majority of visual artists who were part of the Sretensky Boulevard Group were admitted to the Union of Moscow Graphic Artists. This allowed the artists to work officially as book illustrators and graphic designers, which provided them with studio space, materials, and time to work on their own projects. Although they shared the same type of official career, the Sretensky group is not stylistically homogenous. The name merely denotes the community that they formed as a result of working in close proximity to each other.
Moscow Conceptualists
However, many of the artists on Sretensky Boulevard were part of the Moscow ConceptualistMoscow Conceptualists
The Moscow Conceptualist, or Russian Conceptualist, movement began with the Sots art of Komar and Melamid in the early 1970s, and continued as a trend in Russian art into the 1980s...
school. This movement arose in the 1970s to describe the identity of the contemporary Russian artist in opposition to the government. As Joseph Bakstein explains, "The creation of this nonconformist tradition was impelled by the fact that an outsider in the Soviet empire stood alone against a tremendous state machine, a great Leviathan that threatened to engulf him. To preserve one's identity in this situation, one had to create a separate value system, including a system of aesthetic values."
The aesthetic language of Moscow Conceptualism is self-conscious and often deals with the quotidian. Consequently, these artists incorporated their experiences of Soviet life into their art in a manner that was not overtly negative, but at varying times, nostalgic, disinterested, wry, and subtle. Erik Bulatov explains that conceptualist art is, "a rebellion of man against the everyday reality of life... a picture interests me as some kind of system... opening into the space of my everyday existence." By exposing the underlying mechanisms of Soviet society and interpersonal interaction, the artists created a very real and relatable artistic language to rival the "official" propagandistic language of the government.
This group includes Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov, Russian Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в , is a Russian-American conceptual artist of Jewish descent, born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. He worked for thirty years in Moscow, from the 1950s until the late 1980s. He now lives and works on Long Island...
, Erik Bulatov
Erik Bulatov
Erik Bulatov is a Russian artist born in Sverdlovsk in 1933 and raised in Moscow. His father was a communist party official who died in World War II at Pskov, and his mother fled Poland at age 15 in support of the Russian Revolution. Bulatov's works are in the major public and private collections...
, Oleg Vassiliev, Komar and Melamid
Komar and Melamid
Komar and Melamid is an artistic team made up of Russian-born American graphic artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid . In an artists’ statement they said that “Even if only one of us creates some of the projects and works, we usually sign them together...
, Andrei Monastyrsky and also broadly encompasses the Sots
Sots Art
Often referred to as “Soviet Pop Art”, Sots Art originated in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s as a reaction against the official aesthetic doctrine of the state—"Socialist Realism"...
artists and the Collective Actions group, which were both influential in the construction of Russian conceptualist art. The term Moscow Conceptualism is sometimes used interchangeably with post-modernism, and is sometimes meant to include all of the nonconformist artists of the "Soviet generation." This term applies to the artists who were born in the 1930s and 1940s, and grew up under Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
. This group came of age in the 1960s and took nonconformist art in a new direction in the 1970s.
The Petersburg group
Mikhail Chemiakin's Petersburg Non-conformist Group developed out of a 1964 exhibition at the Hermitage MuseumHermitage Museum
The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...
, where Chemiakin worked as gallery assistant. The official name of the exhibition was Exhibition of the artist-workers of the economic part of the Hermitage: Towards the 200th anniversary of Hermitage and it included the work of Chemiakin, V. Kravchenko, V. Uflyand, V. Ovchinnikov and O. Liagatchev. Opening on March 30–31, it was closed by the authorities on April 1. The Hermitage director, Mikhail Artamonov
Mikhail Artamonov
Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov Artamonov's scientific career was centered on the Leningrad University, where he was a professor since 1935 and the head of the chair of archeology since 1949. He researched Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements by the Don River, in the North Caucasus and in the Ukraine...
, was removed from his post.
In 1967 the Petersburg Group Manifesto was written and signed by Chemiakin, O.Liagatchev, E. Yesaulenko and V. Ivanov. Ivanov and Chemiakin had previously developed the idea of Metaphysical Synthesism, which proposed creating a new form of icon painting through the study of religious art across the ages, The essay, Métaphysique Synthétisme included illustrations to the works of E.T.A. Hoffman and Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment
Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It was later published in a single volume. This is the second of Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his...
by Fyodor M. Dostoevsky.
A. Vasiliev and the miniature painter V. Makarenko joined the group later.
Four years after the founding of the group, in 1971, Chemiakin emigrated to France, and later the United States.
Liagatchev, until his emigration to Paris in 1975, and Vasiliev continued to participate in exhibitions of non-conformist artists in Leningrad at the Gaza Cultural Center (1974) and the Nevsky Cultural Center (1975). Liagatchev's work in this period includes: Kafka, Intimeniy XX (1973) and Composition - Canon (1975). The group finally became defunct in 1979, ceasing to have joint exhibitions.
The 1980s
Timur NovikovTimur Novikov
Timur Petrovich Novikov was a Russian philosopher, graphic artist, designer, painter, art theorist and curator...
was one of the leaders of St. Petersburg art in the 1980s. In 1982 his theory of "Zero Object" acted as one of the foundations of Russian conceptual art. In the 1990s he founded neo-academism.
St. Petersburg artists Igor Polyakov
Igor Polyakov
Igor Nikolayevich Polyakov was a Russian rower who competed in the 1952 Summer Olympics for the Soviet Union.He died in Moscow in 2008.In 1952 he won the silver medal as coxswain of the Soviet boat in the eights event.-External links:* *...
and Alexander Rappoport formed the underground art group Battle Elephants
Battle Elephants
Battle Elephants is a Russian art troupe founded in 1984 in St. Petersburg. Formed by Igor Polyakov, Alina Rappoport and Alexander Rappoport, the group shortly came to be an underground society of artists, writers and intellectuals on the outs with Soviet officialdom.- Members :*Igor Polyakov*Alina...
in 1984.
Olga Kisseleva
Olga Kisseleva
Olga Kisseleva is a Russian artist. Olga Kisseleva works mainly in installation, science and media art. Her work employs various media, including video, immersive virtual reality, the Web, wireless technology, performance, large-scale art installations and interactive exhibitions.- Biography :As...
was one of the leaders of Russian New media art
New media art
New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...
.
Another important St. Petersburg artist who emerged in the 1980s was Afrika (Sergei Bugaev)
Afrika (Sergei Bugaev)
Afrika is a Russian artist.He was born in Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea, and in the early 1980s moved to Saint Petersburg, where he met and became friends with leaders of the art scene there, such as the painter Timur Novikov and musician Boris Grebenshchikov...
.
The Odessa Group
By the mid 1970s, in Odessa, a core group of nonconformist artists was formed whose most active members were: Vladimir StrelnikovVladimir Strelnikov
Vladimir Strelnikov is a Ukrainian artist and former Soviet dissident.Strelnikov was born in 1939in Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, and made his studies at the local art academy. He is a member of the Odessa Group of exiled and dissident artists...
, Alexander Anufriev, Valentin Khrushch, Lev Meshberg, Victor Mariniuk, Lyudmila Yastreb, Stanislav Sytchev, Evgeni Rakhmanin, Ruslan Makoev, Andrei Antoniuk and others. These artists continued to show their art privately in spite of the constant harassment from the authorities and the oppression and hatred coming from the majority of the officially recognised artists. They had close connections with the Moscow centres of the underground art movement and were participating in the apartment exhibitions of nonconformist art in Moscow and in Leningrad. They also invited their Russian colleagues to visit Odessa and to take part in their apartment exhibitions there.
The following artists took an active part in the unofficial, so called "apartment exhibitions" in the 1970s in Odessa. Some of them participated in the "apartment exhibitions" in Moscow as well. Valentin Altanietz (1936–1995) Andrey Antoniuk, Alexander Anufriev, Valery Basanietz, Alexei Bokatov, Igor Bozhko, Valentin Khrushch (1943–2005), Michail Kowalski, Ruslan Makoev, Victor Mariniuk, Lev Meshberg, Volodymyr Naumez, Vasiliy Sad
Vasiliy Sad
Vasiliy Sad is an established Ukrainian abstract painter. He has been an active member of the so-called "apartment exhibitions" in Odessa, which defended alternative forms of art against the Socialist Realism endorsed by the Soviet Union....
, Nikolay Novikov, Victor Pavlov, Valery Parfenenko, Evgeni Rakhmanin, Viktor Risovich, Sergei Savchenko, Vitaly Sazonov, Valentin Shapavlenko, Yuri Shurevich (1937–1997), Oleg Sokolov, Nikolai Stepanov, (sculptor) (1937–2003), Alexander Stovbur, Vladimir Strelnikov
Vladimir Strelnikov
Vladimir Strelnikov is a Ukrainian artist and former Soviet dissident.Strelnikov was born in 1939in Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, and made his studies at the local art academy. He is a member of the Odessa Group of exiled and dissident artists...
, Stanislav Sytchov (1937–2003), Vladimir Tziupko, Alexander Voloshinov, Ludmilla Yastreb (1945–1980), Anna Zilberman.
Collections
Collectors of Soviet and Russian Nonconformist art include:- Tatiana Kolodzei and her daughter, Natalia Kolodzei. In 1991 they founded the Kolodzei Art FoundationKolodzei Art FoundationThe Kolodzei Art Foundation, Inc. promotes the contemporary art of Russia and the former Soviet Union. The Kolodzei Art Foundation often utilizes the artistic resources of the Kolodzei Collection of Russian and Eastern European Art, one of the world’s largest private collections, with over 7,000...
which has presented many exhibitions on Russian Nonconformist art. - The Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art MuseumJane Voorhees Zimmerli Art MuseumThe Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum is located on the Voorhees Mall of the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was founded in 1966...
, Rutgers UniversityRutgers UniversityRutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
, New Brunswick, New JerseyNew Brunswick, New JerseyNew Brunswick is a city in Middlesex County, New Jersey, USA. It is the county seat and the home of Rutgers University. The city is located on the Northeast Corridor rail line, southwest of Manhattan, on the southern bank of the Raritan River. At the 2010 United States Census, the population of...
, USA - Lili Brochetain Collection, Paris France
- Robert Mohren Collection, Germany
- The Claude and Nina Gruen Collection, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art MuseumJane Voorhees Zimmerli Art MuseumThe Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum is located on the Voorhees Mall of the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was founded in 1966...
, Rutgers UniversityRutgers UniversityRutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
, New Brunswick, New JerseyNew Brunswick, New JerseyNew Brunswick is a city in Middlesex County, New Jersey, USA. It is the county seat and the home of Rutgers University. The city is located on the Northeast Corridor rail line, southwest of Manhattan, on the southern bank of the Raritan River. At the 2010 United States Census, the population of...
, USA - Igor SavitskyIgor SavitskyIgor Vitalyevich Savitsky Игорь Витальевич Савицкий was a Russian painter, archeologist and collector, especially of avant-garde art. He single-handedly founded the State Art Museum of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, named after I.V...
, Nukus Museum of Art, Nukus, Karakalpakstan.
See also
- Kolodzei Art FoundationKolodzei Art FoundationThe Kolodzei Art Foundation, Inc. promotes the contemporary art of Russia and the former Soviet Union. The Kolodzei Art Foundation often utilizes the artistic resources of the Kolodzei Collection of Russian and Eastern European Art, one of the world’s largest private collections, with over 7,000...
- Russian postmodernismRussian postmodernismRussian postmodernism refers to the cultural, artistic, and philosophical condition in Russia since the downfall of the Soviet Union and dialectical materialism...
- Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Soviet Nonconformist ArtNorton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Soviet Nonconformist ArtThe Dodge Collection is the largest collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art in existence.The collection was amassed by an economics professor from the University of Maryland, Norton Dodge, from the late 1950s until the advent of Perestroika. The collection comprises roughly 20,000 works of art and...
External links
- Kolodzei Art Foundation and Kolodzei Collection of Russian and Eastern European Art
- The Odessa Group
- Oleg Vassiliev Official Site
- Aleksandr Kosolapov Official Site
- Exibition BACK IN THE USSR-The Heirs of Unofficial Art , Venezia 2009 dedicated to the memory of the greatest collector of unofficial art Leonid Talochkin (1936-2002).