Painting in Russia in the Twentieth Century

From the last quarter of the 19th century onward, the history of Russian art is that of a series of school struggles: the Slavophiles against the Westerners; the Academy against the Wanderers; and later the joint effort of the last two against a new movement, born in the 1890s and directed by the art review "The World of Art".
In 1915 Aleksandr Shevchenko published a neo-primitivist manifesto in which he wrote: "For the point of departure in our art we take a lubok and icon, since we find in them the most acute, the most direct perception of life". Besides the icon and lubok, peasant embroideries, trays, toys and children's art were the sources of visual inspiration. Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) the first of many remarkable women prominent in the Russian avant-garde, proudly advertised her derivations with titles such as Spring Peacock (Russian embroidery style) and Sketch for a Religious Composition (Byzantine style). Her painting Frost is a winter scene which simultaneously looks back to folk art and forward to abstraction.

The revolutionary surge which swept away the Tsarist order in Russia also produced a radical, nationalist and idealist movement in art. The experimental work of Russian painters in the early decades of the century is a reminder of how complex the development of 20th-century art has been, and also how dependent on tradition. The widespread desire among young artists to create a "rebirth of Russian painting" at the beginning of the century meant, above all, a reconsideration of native Russian arts and crafts - a return to artistic roots which reflected the interest in primitivism shown by avant-garde painters across Europe.

The 1920s were a period of continued experimentation. Perhaps the most noteworthy movement was Constructivism. Led by El Lissitzky and Aleksandr Rodchenko, the Constructivists favoured strict geometric forms and crisp graphic design. Many also became actively involved in the task of creating living spaces and forms of daily life, working in such fields as furniture, ceramic, and clothing design and architecture. Non-Constructivist artists, including Pavel Filonov and Mariya Ender, also produced major works in this period. By the end of the 1920s the experimental visual arts was not officially favoured. A return to the classics of realism was decreed, and the great painters of the early 1920s found themselves increasingly isolated.

Socialist Realism became officially sanctioned theory and method of visual arts, prevalent in the country from 193.2 to the mid-1980s. Socialist Realism followed the tradition of 19th-century Russian realism in that it purported to be a faithful and objective mirror of life. It differed from earlier realism, however, in several important respects. The realism of Kramskoy, Repin, Perov inevitably conveyed a critical picture of the society they pictured. The primary theme of Socialist Realism is the building of socialism and a classless society. In portraying this struggle, the painter could admit imperfections but was expected to take a positive and optimistic view of socialist society and to keep in mind its larger historical relevance. A requisite of Socialist Realism is the positive hero who perseveres against all odds or handicaps. Socialist Realism thus looks back to Romanticism in that it encourages a certain heightening and idealising of heroes and events to mold the consciousness of the masses. Hundreds of positive heroes - usually engineers, inventors, or scientists created to this specification were strikingly alike in their lack of lifelike credibility. Experimental art was replaced by countless pictures of Lenin, as, for example, Isaac Brodsky's Lenin at the Smolny, of 1930, and by the seemingly endless string of rose-tinted Socialist Realist depiction of everyday life bearing titles like The Tractor Drivers' Supper, of 1951.

The visual arts recovered for a long time. It was not until the 1960s and 70s that a new group of artists, all of whom worked "underground", appeared. Major artists included Ernst Neizvestny, Ilya Kabakov, Mikhail Shemyakin, and "Erik Bulatov. They employed techniques as varied as primitivism, hyperrealism, grotesque, and abstraction, but they shared a common distaste for the canons of Socialist Realism. By the late 1980s a large number of them had emigrated. Many became well known on the international art scene. One of the painters of the 1990s whose landscapes are noted for their romanticism and lyricism is Serge Okazov. His major works have been created in Magadan. S. Okazov's motifs are of a certain monumentally. The painter is seeking for an image to synthesise many impressions, thoughts and emotions.

Literature: Book "Russian art" A.P. Minyar-Belorucheva