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In 1916 Rozanova married Kruchenykh and the same year she joined the "Supremus" group, headed by Malevich. Perhaps influenced by Malevich's suprematist experiments, Rozanova created some abstract compositions which further developed the dynamic element of her earlier works. They show flat, polygonal regions in bright colors.  However, Rozanova's "suprematist" style differed from Malevich's -- it was not only more decorative, but it was not based on the philosophical, mystical ideas (after Sarabianov). In Varvara Stepanova's words, "Malevich constructed his works on the [basis of--A.B.] composition of the square while Rozanova constructed hers on the basis of color" (Yablonskaia, 83). In 1917-18, Rozanova created a number of non-objective color compositions, which she called "colorpainting" (cvetopis'). These compositions were a completely new stage in the development of the Russian avant-garde art; unfortunately, after Rozanova's death, they did not find any continuators in Russia. Only after the WW II, similar color experiments appeared in the American color-field paintings of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in the works of Barnett Newman. A good example of this type of painting is Rozanova's most famous oil, Untitled (Green Stripe), which features a rough cream-colored canvas surface cut by broad perpendicular green stripe.

After the revolution, Rozanova, thanks to her early ties to the Stroganov School, devoted her energies to the organization of industrial art in the country. She was involved with IZO Narkompros (Arts Department of the People's Commisariat of Education) and the Proletcult. Through personal persuasion and by travelling to various locations, she organized Free Art Studios (Svomas) in several provincial cities. Before she died, Rozanova drew up a plan to reorganize the museum of industrial art in Moscow. Her efforts to combine art and industrial production were soon continued and expanded by the Constructivists. When she was diagnosed ill, she was actually engaged in putting up banners and slogans for the anniversary celebration of the October Revolution. Olga Rozanova died of diphtheria a week before this event. A few weeks later, she had a posthumous exhibition, which included 250 paintings, ranging in style from Impressionism through Neo-primitivism, Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism. Although Rozanova died young, she was able to experiment widely and reach non-objectivity following her own, individual path. In the meantime, she created many remarkable paintings. Among the best known are Still Life with Scrolls (1911), The Harbor [Port] (1912), Still Life: Vase (1912), The Pub (1913), Portrait of a Woman in a Green Dress (1913), The City (1913), Writing Desk (1914), Geography (1914-15), Workbox (1915), The Metronome (1915), Non-Objective Composition (1916), Suprematism (1916), Color Composition (1917), and Untitled (Green Stripe) (1917-1918). Equally remarkable is a series of painting of playing cards, later used as one-tone illustrations for Transrational Pook: the boldly-colored Simultaneous Representation of a King of Hearts and a King of Diamonds, The Queen of Spades, The King of Clubs, and The Jack of Hearts(all 1915). [M. P-T. and A.B.]

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Vasilii Kandinskii was a painter, a printmaker, a stage designer, a decorative artist, and a theorist. In 1886 he began to study law and economics at the University of Moscow. Three years later he took part in an ethnographiccal expedition to the Vologda province and wrote an article about folk art; this experience was to influence his early art, which would be highly decorative and would feature bright colors applied on the dark background. This effective technique can be seen in such paintings as Song of the Volga (1906), Couple Riding (1906), and Colorful Life (1907), devoted to the life of Old Russia. After traveling to St. Petersburg and Paris, in 1893 he was appointed to the Department of Law at the University of Moscow. In 1896, at the age of thirty, he gave up his successful career as a lawyer and economist to become a painter. he moved to Munich and one year later entered Anton Azbe's painting school. In 1900 he became a student at the Munich Academy and studied under Franz von Stuck.

 

At that time, he was in contact with St. Petersburg World of Art group. Between 1900 and 1908 exhibited regularly with the Moscow Association of Artists and was very active in the Munich art world. In 1901 founded the Phalanx (dissolved in 1904) and began teaching at a private art school in Munich. Later, Kandinskii traveled through Europe (1903-6). He was affected by the expressive possibilities of Bavarian glass painting, icon painting, and Russian folk art. In 1909 the artist started his famous Improvisations and co-founded the group Neue Kunstlervereinigung. A year later he joined the Jack of Diamonds group and contributed to its first two exhibitions. In 1911 established the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group, which included him, Muenter, Marc, and Kulbin. He participated in its exhibitions and contributed to its Almanac.

 

The publication of the Almanac was one of the most important events in twentieth-century art. The artists of the Blue Rider believed in a birth of a new spiritual epoch and were engaged in the creation of symbols for their own time. There were fourteen major articles in the Almanac, interspersed with notes, quotes, and illustrations. Kandinskii published his concept of "inner necessity." He revised it in 1912, in his famous essay On the Spiritual in Art, Especially in Painting (originally written in German). For Kandinskii art was a portrayal of spiritual values. All art builds from the spiritual and intellectual life of the twentieth century. While each art form appears to be different externally, their internal properties serve the same inner purpose, of moving and refining the human soul. This belief in the secret correspondence of all the arts would become a cornerstone of his artistic convictions and a foundation of his painting.

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The article marked Kandinskii's transition from objective to non-objective art. In 1914 the artist returned to Moscow and three years later married Nina Andreevskaia. He was active as a teacher, museum worker, writer, and lecturer. He was responsible for designing the pedagogical program for the Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk) for 1920, which included Suprematism, Tatlin's "Culture of Materials" and Kandinskii's own theories. The program was opposed by the future Constructivists and Kandinskii had to wait for its implementation till his years at the Bauhaus. In 1921 he was actively involved in the organization of Rakhn (Russian Academy of Aesthetics). At the end of the same year, Kandinskii went to Germany to teach at the Bauhaus, where he was to stay till its closure by the Nazis in 1933. Participated in the Erste Russische Kunstausstellung in Berlin (1922). In 1924, together with Feininger, Iavlenskii, and Klee, established the Blue Four. Moved to Paris in 1933 and remained active as a painter till his death. (After The Avant-Garde in Russia).

In an excellent book on Kandinskii, Hajo Duechting divides the artist's creative development into six periods:

 

• Beginnings: "Mother Moscow" 1866-1896.

Kandinskii was deeply affected by Monet's Haystacks and Wagner's Lohengrin. Disturbed by The discovery of radioactivity, he believed that art was no longer a means of confronting unbearable tension and disharmony, but rather the exact opposite: it was the only way to adopt a more far-sighted position in the world of contradictions and inconsistency.

• Metamorphosis: Munich 1896-1911.

In Germany, Kandinskii developed his idea of the correspondence between a work of art and the viewer, and called it "Klang" (sound or resonance). He wrote: "Color is the power which directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with the strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

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"In the same period of artistic development, he began to divide his paintings into three categories: "Impressions" (which still show some representational elements), "Improvisations" (which convey spontaneous emotional reactions), and "Compositions" (which are the ultimate works of art, created only after a long period of preparations and preliminaries. Characteristically, throughout his life he completed only 10 "Compositions"). Both, Blue Mountain of (1908) and Improvisation 6 (African) of 1909 are quite characteristic of Kandinskii's Munich-Murnau period. The earlier painting includes the motif of riders, particularly important and characteristic for the artist. The bright dabs of paint are applied thickly over the black background, giving the painting an almost three-dimensional character; the rendering of the figures actually resembles embroidery. In the second painting, even though we can still recognize two rudimentary figures, we can no longer be sure what the figures are doing. The subject is completely subjugated to the vivid, almost violent color, reminiscent of the Fauves. The forms are more important as carriers of the colors than carriers of information about the scene.

Breakthrough to the Abstract: The Blue Rider 1911-1914.

On the Spiritual in Art included Kandinskii's ideas about the purpose of art. He believed that the nightmare of materialism oppressed the soul of modern man. All the arts, not just painting, were in a state of spiritual renewal and were beginning to come closer to their objective by turning to the abstract, the elemental. But this spiritual renewal could only grow from a complete synthesis of all arts. Until this epoch-making moment arrived, every art form would have to devote itself to an examination of its individual elements. As an example of this, Kandinskii dealt with the psychological effects of color -- one of the fundamental chapters in his theory of art. He formulated a new harmonic theory of tones of color that maintain their tension by means of warm and cold or light and dark contrasts. The new conception of color and form would ultimately result in pure painting: " . . . a mingling of color and form each with its separate existence, but each blended into a common life which is called a picture by the force of the inner need [necessity -- A.B.]." In a series of small steps Kandinskii had discovered a new concept in painting. He had carefully removed the representational elements from his compositions and transferred the subject matter conveyed by these elements to the "distinctive contours" of color and form. In 1910 he had already described the new subject matter of his paintings in the catalogue for the second Society exhibition: "The expression of mystery by means of mystery. Is that not the content? Is that not the conscious or unconscious purpose of the compulsive urge to create?"

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Russian Intermezzo 1914-1921.

  Stylistically, Kandinskii was again coming closer to his early works. Perhaps he wanted to present a hopeful, joyful view of the future, a sort of paradise on Earth such as was promised by the new revolutionary forces. The artist alternated between a tired, abstract idiom, post-Impressionist landscapes, and naive-romantic fantasy pictures. In Kandinskii's work during this period, the turbulent, glaring world of form and color gives way to cool, rational composition based on the stricter analysis of form. He emphatically disassociated himself from his Constructivist critics (especially Puni): "Just because an artist uses 'abstract' methods, it does not mean that he is an 'abstract' artist. It doesn't even mean that he is an artist. Just as there are enough dead triangles (be they white or green), there are just as many dead roosters, dead horses or dead guitars. One can just as easily be a 'realist academic' as an 'abstract academic'. A form without content is not a hand, just an empty glove full of air."

 

Point and Line to Plane: The Bauhaus 1922-1933.

Teaching at the Bauhaus, Kandinskii used the program elaborated for Inkhuk, with certain modifications. In his color theory he stressed the polarity of yellow and blue, black and white, and green and red. Alongside the familiar symbolic classification of colors and their subdivision into "four main tones" -- warm-cold and light-dark, Kandinskii concentrated more on the physical basis of the classification of colors and, above all, explored the color triad of yellow-blue-red. But his teachings about form were essentially new, starting with an analysis of individual elements such as point, line and plane, and examining their relationships to each other. In connection with the growing Constructivist and Suprematist influences at the Bauhaus, individual geometrical elements increasingly entered the foreground of Kandinskii's work. The passionate colors of the Munich and Moscow paintings gave way to to a cool, occasionally disharmonious use of color. The circle -- a symbol of perfect form and a cosmic symbol at the same time -- was the focal point of his paintings of this period. Kandinskii's concept of synthesis remained too closely attached to the romantic idea of a "total work of art" to fit in with the increasingly functional orientation of the Bauhaus. The most conspicuous transformation in the late paintings of Kandinskii was the use of most subtly differentiated nuances of color. He seems to have left at the Bauhaus all the constructivist color theories, based on primary and secondary colors. He started using combinations of colors never before seen in the world of art; most of them had a delicate filigree effect and were reminiscent of the Slavic folk art. The colors were applied thinly, sometimes transparently, so that they produced an added blending effect. He also used sand to achieve a different texture. As if this new use of color was not enough, Kandinskii dissolved the basic geometric forms into an unbelievable variety of shapes, among which biomorphic ones predominated. These new forms were inspired by a variety of sources, from invertebrate sea creatures, microorganisms and zoological prototypes, to the embryological forms. The paintings of this period are hot-headed, seething, primaeval, as if some distant sun were trying to set life flowing again with protoplasm in a pond. In order to divorce himself from "abstract" Surrealism, Kandinskii redefined the idea of "concrete" art for his own purposes: "Abstract art places a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with 'reality,' next to the 'real' world. Deeper down, it is subject to the common laws of the 'cosmic world.' And so a 'new world of art' is juxtaposed to the 'world of nature.' This 'world of art' is just as real, just as concrete. For this reason I prefer to call so-called 'abstract' art 'concrete' art." Kandinskii introduced a completely new conception of painting that he bequeathed to us in a variety of modes which were often received with hostility. It is a model of art that is non-representational, but understandable in substance. Very different artists and artistic trends have branched out from this model. But the resources of Kandinskii's ideas and theories have not yet been exhausted. (Adapted from Duechting). [K.T. and A.B.]

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Liubov' Sergeevna Popova (1889-1924)

"Representation of reality -- without artistic deformation and transformation -- cannot be the subject of painting."
(From Popova's essay in the Catalogue to the 10th State Exhibition: Non-Objective Creation and Suprematism, Moscow 1919).

 

Liubov' Sergeevna Popova was one of the most talented, prolific, and influential women artists of the Russian avant-garde. She was born in the village of Ivanovskoe in Moscow province, in a family of a wealthy and cultured merchant. After attending the private high schools of Yaltinskaia and Arsen'eva, she began to take art lessons with Zhukovskii and Yuon in Moscow. In 1910, Popova went to Italy and became acquainted with the works of Giotto and Pintoriccio. The rest of that year and in 1911, the artist traveled to St. Petersburg, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Suzdal, Pereslavl, and Kiev and discovered the work of Vrubel and icon painting. In 1912, she set up a studio in Moscow with N. Udal'tsova, her friend from Arsen'eva's school, and both women worked in Tatlin's studio The Tower, where Popova met her life-long friend Vesnin. The same year she traveled to Paris and studied Cubism with Le Fauconnier and Metzinger. After returning to Moscow in 1913, she became interested in Futurism. A year later, just before the war, she went to France and Italy again. In 1915 developed her own variant of non-objective art based on a dynamic combination of principles of icon painting (flatness, linearity) and avant-garde ideas.

In 1916, Popova started calling her compositions "Painterly Architectonics." She became a member of "Supremus," organized by K. Malevich. Two years later, she married Boris von Eding, a Russian art historian, and gave birth to a son. Together with Vesnin, she started teaching at Svomas (Free Art Studios) and later (after 1920) taught at Vkhutemas (Higher Art-Technical Studios). During a trip to Rostov on the Don in 1919, Eding caught typhus and died. Though infected and suffering from typhoid fever, Popova returned to Moscow and recovered from the illness. In 1920, she worked at Inkhuk (Institute of Artistic Culture), a center of Constructivist theories. Over time, the construction elements in Popova's painting increased, progressing from Painterly Architectonics of 1916 to Painterly Constructions of 1920 and Painterly Force Constructions of 1921. Painterly Architectonics show Popova's interest in the presentation of surface planes with an energy of inner tension, as the colored masses, lines and volumes all interrelate to create a formal unity. Initially they took the form of fairly static compositions comprising overlapping planar forms, but very soon they acquired a startling dynamism as Popova tilted the planes at angles and made them slice into each other. Painterly Constructions further developed the idea of intersecting planes, but gave the compositions a feeling of greater freedom and fluidity. Finally, her Spatial Force Constructions were supposed to be preparatory experiments towards concrete material constructions (After Yablonskaia, 103-104).

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Only in recent years Filonov's art received international recognition. The images produced by his mind contributed significantly to the intellectual growth of avant-garde in Russia. His artistic character was founded upon some uncompromising ideals to which he was committed, as he demonstrated in the early years of his work by not accepting the ideology of the Academy of Art in St.Petersburg. Filonov left the academy in 1910 and chose to ignore the mainstream current of art to further develop his personal style. Through his art, Pavel Filonov sought to observe and understand the forces that comprise the human existence, both the internal and external factors. He aimed to achieve a systematic knowledge of the world and it's human inhabitants. Filonov's paintings were in effect not mere images with meaning; -- his work went beyond that -- they were manifestations of intellectual concepts, something derived from his theory and ideology. The viewer of the art was to observe a "projective intellect" within the imagery. "A picture suggests to the mind of its viewer a single conclusion, which cannot be translated into words." After the 1917 revolution, Filonov worked to complete the development of his "analytical painting". The changes in the Russian society brought inspiration to the Futurist artists. Filonov dedicated much of his time and effort to artistic research and creativity, working on his paintings as much as 18 hours a day. In 1925, having found many followers and supporters for his style of expression, he founded a school in Petrograd, which was shut down by the government in 1928, together with all other private artistic and cultural organizations. In "Ideology of Analytical Art" Filonov explains what he expects from his student artists (and, of course, from himself): A work of art is any piece of work made with the maximum tension of analytical madness [sdelannost' -- The word is Filonov's neologism, derived from the Russian verb "sdelat'," -- to make, to do. Used in its perfectiv form, the verb denotes the completion of action]. The only professional criterion for evaluating a piece of work is its madness. In their profession the artist and his disciple must love all that is "made well" and hate all that is "not made." In analytical thought the process of study becomes an integral part of the creative process for the piece being made. The more consciously and forcefully the artist works on his intellect, the stronger the effect the finished work has on the spectator. Each brushstroke, each contact with the picture, is a precise recording through the material and in the material of the inner psychical process taking place in the artist, and the whole work is the entire recording of the intellect of the person who made it.

 

Art is the reflection through material or the record in material of the struggle for the formation of man's higher intellectual condition. Art's efficacy vis-à-vis the spectator is equal to this; i.e., it both makes him superior and summons him to become superior. The artist-proletarian's obligation is not only to create works that answer the demands of today, but also to open the way to intellect into the distant future. The artist-proletarian must act on the intellect of his comrade proletarians not only through what they can understand at their present stage of development. Work on content is work on form and vice versa. The more forcefully the form is expressed, the more forcefully the content is expressed. Form is made by persistent line. Every line must be made. Every atom must be made; the whole work must be made and adapted. Think persistently and accurately over every atom of the work you are doing. Make every atom persistently and accurately. Introduce persistently and accurately into every atom the color you have studied -- so that it enters the atom just as heat enters the body or so that it is linked organically with the form, just as in nature a flower's cellulose is linked with its color.

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The artist's fascination with construction allowed her to join other constructivists in absolute rejection of easel painting. She gave up her own painting and turned entirely to industrial design (1921). A year before her untimely death, Popova was appointed head of the Design Studio at the First State Textile Print Factory in Moscow. She excelled in industrial design of clothing and fabrics and produced posters, book designs, ceramics, and photomontages.Popova participated in many famous avant-garde exhibitions in Moscow and St. Petersburg (Petrograd): Jack of Diamonds (Moscow, 1914 and 1916), Tramway V / First Futurist Exhibition of Paintings (Petrograd 1915), 0.10 / Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings (Petrograd 1915), The Store (Moscow, 1916), 5 x 5 = 25 (with Rodchenko, Stepanova, Vesnin and Exter), and others.  In addition, she was successful as a set designer for theatre. Her first scenic designs were for Tairov's production of Romeo and Juliet (1920). Even though these designs were not used by Tairov, Popova's interest in stage design did not wane. The following year, she created the sets for Lunacharsky's The Locksmith and the Chancellor and in 1922 for Vsevolod Meyerhold's productions of Crommelynck's Magnanimous Cuckold. She continued her collaboration with Meyerhold, preparing sets for S. Tretiakov's Earth in Turmoil (1923). Her life was cut short in 1924 when she contracted scarlet fever and died at the age of 35. [E.P. and A.B.]

 

Pavel Nikolaevich Filonov (1883-1941)

Pavel Filonov was born in Moscow. Early orphaned, he moved to St. Petersburg where he took art lessons. From 1908 to 1910 he attended the Academy of Arts, but was expelled in 1910. In 1911 he came in contact with the Union of Youth and contributed to its exhibitions. Next year travelled to Italy and France. In 1913 designed the stage set for Vladimir Maiakovskii's tragedy Vladimir Maiakovskii. Over the next two years he worked as an illustrator of futurist booklets, published his transrational poem The Chant of Universal Flowering (Propoved' o porosli mirovoi), and started developing his artistic theories, the so-called Ideology of Analytical Art and the Principle of Madeness (see extracts below). In 1919 exhibited at the First State Free Exhibition of Works of Art in Petrograd. In 1923 he became a professor at the Academy of Arts and an associate of the Institute of Artistic Culture (Inkhuk). In the same year he published the "Declaration of Universal Flowering" in the journal Zhizn' Iskusstva. Two years later, Filonov established the Collective of Masters of Analytical Art (known today as Filonov School). Because of continuing attacks and ostracism, Filonov's exhibition planned for 1929-30 at the Russian Museum did not open. In 1932 he contributed to the exhibition Artists of the RSFSSR over the last 15 years. His life and creativity was cut short by the war. He died of pneumonia during the siege of Leningrad in 1941. In 1967 he had a posthumous exhibition in Novosibirsk.

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Natal'ia Sergeevna Goncharova (1881-1962)

 

Goncharova was born in Negaevo, in Tula Province on June 16, 1881 and died in Paris on October 17, 1962. A descendant of the great poet Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin's wife, she was the daughter of Sergei Goncharov, an architect, and Ekaterina Il'ichna Beliaeva, but grew up in her grandmother's house in the Tula Province. She attended the Fourth Gymnasium for Girls in Moscow and in 1898 entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture as a sculpture student. At the school Goncharova met Mikhail Larionov who became her lifelong companion and encouraged her to leave sculpture for painting. Goncharova was attracted briefly to Impressionism and Symbolism, but her participation in the "Golden Fleece" exhibition introduced her to the styles of Gauguin, Matisse, Cezanne and Toulouse-Lautrec whose art would influence her development. In a series depicting the favorite theme of the Russian peasants working the land, this influence is revealed in both color and the approach to form. In 1910 Goncharova became one of the founding members of the "Jack of Diamond" group but later went her separate way to establish the "Donkey's Tail" group with Larionov. In 1912 the group held their first exhibition with more than 50 works from Goncharova, executed in a number of different styles. Goncharova was a connoisseur of lubki, Russian popular prints, and the titles of her works clearly betray this influence. Her use of conventions of icon painting is particularly evident in the Evangelists

In 1913 she entered her most productive period, painting dozens of canvases. In her Neo-primitive works she continued to explore the styles of Eastern and traditional art forms, but also experimented with Cubo-futurism (see The Cyclist, painted in 1912-13), and adopted Larionov new style of Rayonism  Her famous Cats (1911-12) and Green and Yellow Forest (1912) show how confidently she was able to work in the Rayonist style, developing her own artistic idiom independently of Larionov. In August 1913, Goncharova attracted international attention exhibiting over 700 paintings in an one-woman show . During this period she was, like Larionov, associated with the literary avant-garde. In 1914 Goncharova visited Paris to make designs for Diaghilev's production of Le coq d'or. Her designs, based on Eastern and Russian folk art, took Paris by storm. She also held a joint exhibition with Larionov at the Galerie Paul Guillaume. She returned to Moscow after the beginning of the war. At the request of Diaghilev, Larionov and Goncharova left Russia for Switzerland in June 1915. In 1916 they accompanied Diaghilev to Spain and Italy. Spain left an everlasting impression on Goncharova. She was especially moved by the bearing of Spanish women in their mantillas. From that moment on, Espagnoles became her favorite subject. In 1919 Larionov and Goncharova settled permanently in Paris; they were granted citizenship in 1938. During the Paris period, Goncharova became famous for her theatrical designs. In the 1920s she developed her own idiom for her series Espagnoles and for many paintings with bathers. Following Diaghilev's death in 1929, Goncharova's creative powers declined only to be briefly revitalized by the public rediscovery of Rayonism in 1948. After Larionov's stroke in 1950, Goncharova's health also started to decline, and although the couple married in 1955, their last years were spent in poverty. [S.C.]

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