During the 1920s, there was intense ideological competition between different artistic groupings striving to determine the forms and directions in which Soviet art would develop, seeking to occupy key posts in cultural institutions and to win the favor and support of the authorities.
In the late 1920s, the government became more focused on evaluating sexuality in art through the lens of socialist morality.[1]:186 This resulted in increased criticism of artists like Kasyan Goleizovsky and Alexander Grinberg.[1]:186
This struggle was made even more bitter by the growing crisis of radical leftist art. At the turn of the 1930s, many avant-garde tendencies had exhausted themselves, and their former proponents began depicting real-life objects as they attempted to return to the traditional system of painted images, including the leading Jack of Diamonds artists. In the early 1930s, Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) returned to figurative art.[2]
The position of the Fine Arts Department was most fully expressed by Nikolay Punin in 1919. He wrote: "If the depiction of the world does aid cognition, then only at the very earliest stages of human development, after which it already becomes either a direct hindrance to the growth of art or a class-based interpretation of it", and "The element of depiction is already an element characteristic of a bourgeois understanding of art".[3]
The avant-garde movement attracted the interests of the Proletkult organization,[5] which was highly eclectic in its art forms and included modern directions like impressionism and cubism.
Among the early experiments of Proletkult was the pragmatic aesthetic of industrial art, the prominent theorist being Boris Arvatov (1896–1940).
Another group was UNOVIS, a very short-lived but influential collection of young artists led by Kazimir Malevich in the 1920s.
After the 1917 discovery of porcelain[clarification needed] in the State Porcelain Manufactory, it was also used for propaganda purposes. This porcelain was intended less for everyday use and more for decoration. As early as the 1920s, there were exhibitions of porcelain outside the Soviet Union.[6]
Officially approved art was required to follow the doctrine of socialist realism. In the spring of 1932, the Central Committee of the Communist Party decreed that all existing literary and artistic groups and organizations should be disbanded and replaced with unified associations of creative professions. Accordingly, the Moscow and Leningrad Union of Artists was established in August 1932, which brought the history of post-revolutionary art to a close. The epoch of Soviet art began.[7]
However, art exhibitions of 1935–1960 disprove the claims that the artistic life of the period was suppressed by the ideology and artists submitted entirely to what was then called «social order». A great number of landscapes, portraits, genre paintings, and studies exhibited at the time pursued purely technical purposes and were thus free from any ideology. That approach was also pursued ever more consistently in the genre paintings as well, although young artists at the time still lacked the experience and professional mastery to produce works of high art level devoted to Soviet actuality.[10]
A known Russian art historian, Vitaly Manin, considered that «what in our time is termed a myth in the works of artists of the 1930s was a reality, and one, moreover, that was perceived that way by real people. Another side of life did exist, of course, but that does not annul what the artists depicted.... One gets the impression that disputes about art were conducted before and after 1937 in the interests of the party bureaucracy and of artists with a proletarian obsession, but not at all of true artists, who found themes in the contemporary world and did not get embroiled in questions of the form of their expression».[11]
In 1957, the first All-Union Congress of Soviet Artists takes place in Moscow. It establishes the USSR Union of Artists, which unites over 13000 professional artists from all republics and of all specializations. In 1960, the Union of Artists of the Russian Federation was organized.[12] Accordingly, these events influenced the art life in Moscow, Leningrad, and the province. The scope of experimentation was broadened; in particular, this concerned the form and painterly and plastic languages. Images of youths and students, rapidly changing villages and cities, virgin lands brought under cultivation, grandiose construction plans being realized in Siberia and the Volga region, and great achievements of Soviet science and technology became the chief topics of the new painting. Heroes of the time—young scientists, workers, civil engineers, and physicians—become the most popular heroes of paintings.
At this period, life provided artists with plenty of thrilling topics, positive figures, and images. The legacies of many great artists and art movements again became available for study and public discussion. This greatly broadened artists’ understanding of the realist method and widened its possibilities. It was the repeated renewal of the very conception of realism that made this style dominate in Russian art throughout its history. Realist tradition gave rise to many trends in contemporary painting, including painting from nature, «severe style» painting, and decorative art. However, during this period, impressionism, postimpressionism, cubism, and expressionism also had their fervent adherents and interpreters.[citation needed]
The death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 and Nikita Khrushchev's Thaw paved the way for a wave of liberalization in the arts throughout the Soviet Union. Although no official change in policy took place, artists began to feel free to experiment in their work with considerably less fear of repercussions than during the Stalinist period.
In the 1950s, Moscow artist Ely Bielutin encouraged his students to experiment with abstractionism, a practice thoroughly discouraged by the Artists' Union, which strictly enforced the official policy of socialist realism. Artists who chose to paint in alternative styles had to do so completely in private and were never able to exhibit or sell their work. As a result, nonconformist art developed along a separate path from the official art that was recorded in the history books.
Life magazine published two portraits by two painters who, to their minds, were most representative of Russian arts of the period: Serov, an official Soviet icon, and Anatoly Zverev, an underground Russian avant-garde expressionist. Serov's portrait of Vladimir Lenin and Zverev's self-portrait were associated by many with an eternal Biblical struggle between Satan and the Saviour. When Khrushchev learned about the publication, he was outraged and forbade all contacts with Western visitors and closed down all semi-legal exhibitions. Zverev was the main target of his outrage.
The Lianozovo Group was formed around the artist Oscar Rabin in the 1960s and included artists such as Valentina Kropivnitskaya, Vladimir Nemukhin, and Lydia Masterkova. While not adhering to any common style, these artists sought to faithfully express themselves in the mode they deemed appropriate, rather than adhere to the propagandistic style of socialist realism.
Tolerance of nonconformist art by the authorities underwent an ebb and flow until the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Artists took advantage of the first few years after the death of Stalin to experiment in their work without the fear of persecution. In 1962, artists experienced a slight setback when Nikita Khrushchev appeared at the exhibition celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Artist's Union at the Moscow Manege exhibition hall, an episode known as the Manege Affair. Among the customary works of Socialist Realism were a few abstract works by artists such as Ernst Neizvestny and Eli Beliutin, which Khrushchev criticized as being "shit" and the artists for being "homosexuals". The message was clear: artistic policy was not as liberal as everyone had hoped.[citation needed]
Politics played a significant role in the development of late Soviet art. Both within the art world and the general public, very little consideration has been given to the aesthetic character of the work produced in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, the official and unofficial art of the period usually stood in for either "bad" or "good" political developments. A more nuanced picture would emphasize that there were numerous competing groups making art in Moscow and Leningrad throughout this period. The most important figures for the international art scene have been the Moscow artists Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Andrei Monastyrsky, Vitaly Komar, and Aleksandr Melamid.
The most infamous incident regarding nonconformist artists in the former Soviet Union was the 1974 Bulldozer Exhibition, which took place in a park just outside Moscow and included work by such artists as Oscar Rabin, Komar and Melamid, Alexandr Zhdanov, Nikolai Smoliakov, and Leonid Sokov. The artists involved had written to the authorities for permission to hold the exhibition but received no answer to their request. They decided to go ahead with the exhibition anyway, which consisted solely of unofficial works of art that did not fit into the rubric of socialist realism. The KGB put an end to the exhibition just hours after it opened by bringing in bulldozers to completely destroy all of the artworks present. However, the foreign press had been there to witness the event, and the worldwide coverage of it forced the authorities to permit an exhibition of nonconformist art two weeks later in Izmailovsky Park in Moscow.
A few West European collectors supported many of the artists in the Soviet Union during the 1960s and 1970s. One of the leading collectors and philanthropists was the couple Kenda and Jacob Bar-Gera. The Bar-Gera Collection consists of some 200 works by 59 Soviet-era Russian artists who did not want to embrace the official art directive of the post-Stalinist Soviet Union. Kenda and Jacob Bar-Gera, both survivors of the Holocaust, supported these partially persecuted artists by sending them money or painting materials from Germany to the Soviet Union. Even though Kenda and Jacob did not meet the artists in person, they bought many of their paintings and other art objects. The works were smuggled to Germany by hiding them in the suitcases of diplomats, traveling businessmen, and students, thus making the Bar-Gera Collection of Russian Non-Conformists among the largest of its kind in the world. Among others, the collection contains works of Bachtschanjan Vagritsch, Jankilevskij Wladimir, Rabin Oskar, Batschurin Ewganij, Kabakov Ilja, Schablavin Sergei, Belenok Piotr, Krasnopevcev Dimitrij, Schdanov Alexander, Igor Novikov, Bitt Galina, Kropivnitzkaja Walentina, Schemjakin Michail, Bobrowskaja Olga, Kropivnitzkij Lew, Schwarzman Michail, Borisov Leonid, Kropiwnizkij Jewgenij, Sidur Vadim, Bruskin Grischa, Kulakov Michail, Sitnikov Wasili, and many others.
By the end of the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of Perestroika and Glasnost made it virtually impossible for the authorities to place restrictions on artists or their freedom of expression. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new market economy enabled the development of a gallery system, which meant that artists no longer had to be employed by the state and could create work according to their own tastes as well as the tastes of their private patrons. Consequently, after around 1986, the phenomenon of nonconformist art in the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
↑ The Leningrad School of Painting. Essays on the History. St Petersburg, ARKA Gallery Publishing, 2019, page 25.
↑ Пунин Н. Искусство и пролетариат // Изобразительное искусство. — 1919, №1. С.24, 30.
↑ The Leningrad School of Painting. Essays on the History. St Petersburg, ARKA Gallery Publishing, 2019, page 26.
↑ The Leningrad School of Painting. Essays on the History. St Petersburg, ARKA Gallery Publishing, 2019, page 399.
↑ Lobanov-Rostovsky, Nina. "Soviet Propaganda Porcelain". The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 11 (1989): 126-41. Accessed April 18, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1503986.
↑ Unknown Socialist Realism. The Leningrad School. St Petersburg, NP-Print, 2007. P.28–29.
↑ Anniversary Directory graduates of Saint Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture named after Ilya Repin, Russian Academy of Arts. 1915 - 2005. - St Petersburg: Pervotsvet Publishing, 2007.
↑ The Leningrad School of painting 1930 – 1990s. Historical outline.
↑ The Leningrad School of Painting. Essays on the History. St Petersburg, ARKA Gallery Publishing, 2019. P.39.
↑ Манин В. С. Искусство и власть. Борьба течений в советском изобразительном искусстве 1917-1941 годов. СПб: Аврора, 2008. С.335.
↑ The Leningrad School of Painting. Essays on the History. St Petersburg, ARKA Gallery Publishing, 2019. P.404—405.
Further reading
Directory of members of the Union of Artists of USSR. Volume 1,2. - Moscow: Soviet artist, 1979.
Time for change. The Art of 1960–1985 in the Soviet Union / Almanac. Vol. 140. St Petersburg, State Russian Museum, 2006.
* Anniversary Directory graduates of Saint Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture named after Ilya Repin, Russian Academy of Arts. 1915 - 2005. - St Petersburg: Pervotsvet Publishing, 2007.
Taylor, Jonathan R. P (2023). Soviet Propaganda & The Classroom: Paintings, Posters & Pictures: Bulgaria - presents a vast collection of Soviet art as propaganda. Imprint Lulu: Brittunculi Records & Books. ISBN 9781312428256.
Манин В. С. Искусство и власть. Борьба течений в советском изобразительном искусстве 1917-1941 годов. СПб: Аврора, 2008.
Soviet nonconformist art was Soviet art produced in the former Soviet Union outside the control of the Soviet state started in the Stalinist era, in particular, outside of the rubric of Socialist Realism. Other terms used to refer to this phenomenon are Soviet counterculture, "underground art" or "unofficial art".
Union of Artists of Saint Petersburg was established on August 2, 1932, as a creative union of the Leningrad artists and arts critics. Prior to 1959, it was called "Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists". From 1959, it was called as Leningrad branch of Union of Artists of Russian Federation. After the renaming of the city in 1991, it became known as the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists.
Evgenia Petrovna Antipova was a Russian painter, graphic artist, and art teacher. She was known for her genre compositions, portraits, landscapes, and still life paintings, which she created using oils and watercolours. Among her favourite themes were apple orchards and Crimean landscapes.
The Leningrad School of Painting is a phenomenon that refers to a large group of painters who developed in Leningrad around the reformed Academy of Arts in 1930–1950 and was united by the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists (1932–1991).
The year 1959 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian Fine Arts.
The year 1979 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian Fine Arts.
The year 1976 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian Fine Arts.
The year 1922 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian Fine Arts.
The year 1923 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian Fine Arts.
The year 1924 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian Fine Arts.
The year 1925 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian Fine Arts.
The year 1926 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian fine arts.
The year 1939 was marked by many events that left an imprint on the history of Soviet and Russian fine arts.
Semion Lvovich Abugov was a Russian and Soviet painter and art educator, who lived and worked in Leningrad, a member of the Leningrad Union of Artists, professor of the Repin Institute of Arts, regarded as one of the leading art educator of the Leningrad school of painting,
Mikhail Ivanovich Avilov was a Russian and Soviet painter and art educator, who lived and worked in Leningrad, a member of the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists, professor of the Repin Institute of Arts, Stalin Prize winner, People's Artist of the Russian Federation, regarded as one of the brightest representatives of Soviet Art, who played an important role in the formation of the Leningrad School of Painting. He is mostly known for his battle paintings.
The All-Union Art Exhibition Dedicated to the 40th Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution was one of the largest art exhibitions in Soviet history. Exhibition took place in Manezh Exhibition Hall from November 5, 1957, to May 1958.
The Fine Arts of Leningrad retrospective exhibition became the largest showing of Leningrad artists in the Soviet History outside the city, as well as in total one of the most important art exhibitions in USSR of the 1970s. The exhibition took place in the Moscow Manezh.
The Autumn Exhibition was one of the largest Soviet art exhibitions of 1958 and of the whole of the early Khrushchev Thaw. The exhibition took place in the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists Exhibition Halls at Bolshaya Morskaya st. 38.
Exhibition of Leningrad artists of 1970 dedicated to the 25th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany was opened in Exhibition Halls of the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists and become one of the notable art exhibitions of 1970 in the USSR.
The fine art of Leningrad is an important component of Russian Soviet art—in the opinion of the art historians Vladimir Gusev and Vladimir Leniashin, "one of its most powerful currents". This widely used term embraces the creative lives and the achievements of several generations of Leningrad painters, sculptors, graphic artists and creators of decorative and applied art from 1917 to the early 1990s.
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