Page 34 - Studio International - September 1973

Primitivism in the first wave of the twentieth-

century avant garde in Russia

Ivor Davies

An organic connection has always existed in Academy of Art, and called themselves 'The Impressionism to his stage designs after seeing
Russia between the arts and general cultural Wanderers.' their work in Paris in 1885. He became an
conditions, perhaps more clearly and Savva Mamontov in the 187os surrounded important influence after his appointment as
consciously than in other countries. By the himself with artists, composers, singers, professor at the Moscow College in 1901 and
time Peter the Great came to the throne Russia architects, art historians, archaeologists, writers his pupils included Larionov, Goncharova,
was at the point of choosing between keeping and actors at Abramtsevo reviving native arts. Tatlin, Falk, the Burliuk brothers,
Asiatic ways of life or adopting European ones. Avant-garde art was supported by the new rich Kruchenykh and Mayakovsky, the leaders of
Peter europeanized and destroyed many native merchants until 1917, the best known the first wave of the twentieth-century Russian
traditions. But the generation educated mostly being Tretyakov, who gave his collection avant garde.
at Moscow University between 1830 and 1848 to the city of Moscow in 1892 after In 1895 Shchukin met Durand-Ruel, the
produced many idealists who were not thirty years of collecting, and the Shchukin French dealer, and acquired paintings by Monet
concerned with politics and liberal reform as brothers, who at first collected Oriental art and and in 1903 important works by
much as with Russian history and the Russian Russian folk art. At the Abramtsevo artists' neo-impressionists, especially Gauguin, Van
mind. They thought to rediscover Russia's colony interest in reviving mediaeval Russian art Gogh, and later Henri Rousseau, Fauve works
peculiarity in her old peasant commune (mir), grew; a church in the style of mediaeval by Matisse, Derain, the work of Picasso's blue
which they said revealed the socialistic soul of Novgorod designed by Vasnetsov with the help and rose periods and his analytical Cubism.
Russia as unlike the individualist western soul. of the archaeologist and teacher Polenov was (Another collector, Morosov, acquired Italian
Prominent among those thinkers were Herzen completed in 1882, and realistic theatrical decor futurist paintings from Antonio Marasco in
and Bakunin, who became the originators of began when the artist Vasnetsov was employed 1914.) Thus as a result of this new Western
Russian socialism. Manufacturers and instead of the traditional artisan decorator. influx and an admiration for the Russian
businessmen supported the movement Theatre was to be a powerful influence on symbolist Vrubel, the Blue Rose Group began
financially and art gradually came to be regarded Russian artists until 1922. Konstantin Korovin to introduce more colour into their first exhibition
as an instrument of social service, notably with (1861-1939), a member of the younger in Moscow in 1907. Mayakovsky described them
a group which declared a break with the generation, applied elements of French as being 'in love with the music of colour and
2

I Sun with Zodiac
18th-century lubok
Wood engraving, painted in five
traditional colours, 90 x 84.5 cm
Coil. D. A. Robinsky
2 A Grenadier of the Russian Guards
i8th-century lubok, wood engraving
65 x42.3 cm
Coll. A. V. Olsufera

8o