Introduction to ‘Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932’

Exhibition co-curator Professor John Milner introduces ‘Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932’ and investigates how artists from Kazimir Malevich to Alexander Deineka made Russian art revolutionary in the first 15 years after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. The revolution triggered radical innovations in Russian art. Encouraged to work collectively to promote the revolution, artists began to make a face for the Bolshevik regime, replacing signs of the Imperial command with an art for the people. Artists including Kandinsky, Malevich, Tatlin, Rodchenko and Popova turned the storm of the Russian Revolution into a radical experiment in art and society. In 1932, the work of these artists was celebrated and exhibited in 'Artists of the Russian Federation over Fifteen Years', a diverse survey held in Leningrad and curated by the critic Nikolai Punin. Yet later in the same year, all independent art groups were dissolved, and Socialist Realism became the dominant force in the Russian art world.