"The Russian avant-garde was the only movement of its kind in which the achievements of women were unquestionably equal to their male colleagues," wrote the late American art critic Hilton Kramer while reviewing the first exhibition of Russian collector George Costakis's holdings of early 20th-century Russian artists in the United States that took place at the Guggenheim in 1981.
From a Western perspective, critics often found puzzling the number of works produced by the many women artists who belonged to the avant-garde movement in Russia betwen 1910 and 1930.
An exhibition entitled "Sisters of the Revolution - Russia 1907-1934" that will open in March at the Groninger Museum, will look at this fascinating chapter in the history of Russian art through the works of different women artists, some of them presented in the Netherlands for the very first time.
Women had a prevalently domestic and maternal role in 19th century Europe. In Western bourgeois culture women and artists had indeed antithetical roles: creativity was seen as anti-domestic and therefore only men could be considered artists.
Russian women had instead gained direct access to art education in 1840. Two years later the first art school for women - the Women's Section of the St Petersburg Drawing School - was opened, followed by the Stieglitz School and the Stroganov School in Moscow; by 1870 women were admitted to the Academy of Arts. As a consequence, women who participated in the avant-garde were the second or third generation of professionally trained artists.
"Sisters of the Revolution" tries to analyse the impact that the powerful vision of figures such as Aleksandra Ekster and Natalia Goncharova had on the avant-garde movements structured around Mikhail Larionov, Kazimir Malevich or Vladimir Tatlin.
The Groninger exhibition will allow visitors to discover and rediscover different styles, from figurative neo-primitivism to abstract compositions based on cubo-futurism, suprematism or constructivism.
One of the members of the early avant-garde, Natalya Goncharova was influenced in her art by Russian folk traditions, embroidery patterns and wood carvings. Her paintings portrayed the cyclical life and labour of Russian peasantry and Goncharova used in them a vast profusion of colours.
Goncharova also collaborated with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes creating sets and costumes for some of the performances of the famous corps de ballet.
After graduating in painting from Kiev Art School in 1906, Aleksandra Ekster worked between Kiev and Paris. She also created sets for theatre and films: together with Sergei Kozlovsky she designed the sets and the geometrical costumes for Yakov Protazanov’s Soviet sci-fi Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) for which she employed unusual materials such as aluminum, metal foil and glass.
Apart from being painters, leading constructivists Lyubov Popova and Varvara Stepanova were also textile and costume designers. Their stark creations for the theatre were based on geometrical forms and were inspired by a functional constructivist aesthetic and by biomechanics.
The exhibition will feature approximately fifty masterpieces borrowed from the collection of the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow, as well as works from the collection of the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen, and from the Otten Collection from Hohenems, Austria.
Among the displayed works there will also be paintings by Kazimir Malevich's students Anna Kagan and Anna Leporskaya, and by Olga Rozanova and Nadezhda Udaltsova who joined the group of Russian avant-garde artists "Supremus" led by Malevich.
Visitors will also get the chance to see less known artists such as Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaya, Elena Liessner-Blomberg, Antonina Sofronova, and Maria Vladimirovna Ender and work by Alida Pott, one of the few female artists in De Ploeg, the Groningen artists’ association.
The most interesting thing about the artists featured in "Sisters of the Revolution" - often referred to as the "amazons" - is that, though they went through obstacles and their works weren't always critically acclaimed, they enjoyed freedoms in their personal, creative and social lives that were at the time unknown in the West. The "amazons" often worked in creative partnerships that didn't imply the subordination of women to men and seemed to have at their disposal a great availability of spaces of experimentation in the form of studios, theatres, and other creative workshops.
Many things have changed regarding women artists since the amazons first started working, yet there are still too many gendered barriers in the art industry that do not offer equal platforms for the presentation and critical discussion of artworks.
Hopefully "Sisters of the Revolution" will help us rediscovering some key Russian artists, but it will also prompt us to ponder a little bit more about the gendered/ungendered dichotomy in contemporary arts.
Sisters of the Revolution, Russia 1907-1934 is at the Groninger Museum, The Netherlands, from 23 March to 18 August 2013.
Image credits:
Aleksandra Alexandrovna Ekster, Composition, 1914 © Tretyakov Museum, Moskow
Natalya Sergejevna Goncharova, Self-portrait with yellow lilies, 1907/1908, © Tretyakov Museum, Moscow
Natalya Sergejevna Goncharova, Women planting potatoes, 1907/1908, © Tretyakov Museum, Moscow
Anna Aleksandrovna Leporskaya, Figure with coloured column, 1932-1934, © Tretyakov Museum, Moskow
Ljubov Sergejevna Popova, Cubo-futuristic composition with violin, 1915, © Otten Collection
Ljubov Sergejevna Popova, Composition, 1918, © Wilhelm-Hack-Museum
Ljubov Sergejevna Popova, Construction, 1920, © Tretyakov Museum, Moskow
Ljubov Sergejevna Popova, Space force construction, 1921, © Tretyakov Museum, Moskow
Olga Vladimirovna Rozanova, Hairdresser's shop, 1915, © Tretyakov Museum, Moskow
Varvara Fjodorovna Stepanova, Three Figures, 1920, © Tretyakov Museum, Moskow
Varvara Fjodorovna Stepanova, Dancing figures on a white background, 1920, © Tretyakov Museum, Moskow
Varvara Fjodorovna Stepanova, Textile design, 1924, © Otten Collection
Varvara Fjodorovna Stepanova, Textile design, 1923/1924, © Otten Collection
Anna Aleksandrovna Leporskaya, Three women, 1932-1934, © Tretyakov Museum, Moskow
All images courtesy of The Groninger Museum
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