Rafters. A revolutionary situation has developed in Russian museums The flame of revolution in the Tretyakov Gallery

The exhibition "Someone 1917" opens with two paintings. On the right - "In Russia (The Soul of the People)" by Mikhail Nesterov: beautiful, best, Russian people with icons and banners follow the pure-souled boy to God. On the contrary - "Troubled" by Wassily Kandinsky, an abstract composition with an incomprehensible motley core and an extremely depressing gray background. Further, the exposition will be divided into opposite parts. As for the painting itself: traditional figurative art and non-objective avant-garde, and between them, modernist paintings, moderately conditional. And according to the plots - reflecting reality and independent of it. Most of the works that do not reflect life, not that the artists were not of this world, no, some were members of parties, almost everyone understood that the country would not come out of war and unrest without loss. But no one spoke directly about this in art.

The documents

The exhibition has a separate section with a documentary chronicle of the events of 1917. A catalog book was published for it with articles on artistic life and the market in the revolutionary years, on the development of the avant-garde and on Jewish artists. Also given are fragments from the diaries of artists - eyewitnesses of the events.

In the year of the centenary of Russian revolutions, the Tretyakov Gallery decided to show the best, important and iconic works created by Russian artists in the catastrophic year of the fall of the empire and two revolutions. Oddly enough, there is no premonition of an epochal turning point and the horrors of a fratricidal war in more than a hundred paintings of the exhibition.

Of course, it is clear from the faces of the peasants from Boris Grigoriev’s Rasey cycle that the Russian people are not God-bearers, but this artist generally preferred not to idealize those portrayed, either due to misanthropy, or simply his writing style was sharp. The complete opposite of him is Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin with his most delicate picturesque idylls, where the peasant women are elegant and iconic and the people work in the sweet “Noon. Summer" in complete harmony with each other and the universe.

Photo gallery

The only artist shown in “Someone 1917” who looked directly and soberly into the face of the coming boor is Ilya Repin. In his Bolsheviks, a pig-faced soldier takes bread from poor children. Nearby, in the ideological center of the exhibition, in the place where the image of Lenin would have flaunted in Soviet times, two portraits of Alexander Kerensky hang. Repin wrote the chairman of the Provisional Government with obvious warmth and respect, and Isaac Brodsky - skillfully and dryly, later he would put much more flattery and sentimentality into the portraits of Soviet leaders. Lenin is not at the exhibition, Russian artists did not paint him in 1917. In the section “Persons of the Epoch” there are completely different heroes: Felix Yusupov in Yan Rudnitsky is handsome and sad, Maxim Gorky in Valentina Khodasevich is also dapper and sad, only they are written in fundamentally different ways .

In general, the exhibition celebrating the centenary of the revolutions in the Tretyakov Gallery turned out to be more about the artistic time, and not about the historical, not about the revolution, but about art. About the richness and diversity of creative searches of excellent artists, who work traditionally, who are innovative, but interesting and strong. It was the year when masterpieces were created: Nesterov's idealistic "Philosophers", Marc Chagall's famous painting "Above the City" with lovers flying in the sky, Kazimir Malevich's bright non-objective "Dynamic Suprematism" and Olga Rozanova's absolutely innovative "Green Stripe".

Together with them, you can see dozens of very interestingly solved and artistic paintings of various directions: from the conditional, almost geometric, “Refugee” by Alexander Drevin to the dry and aesthetic “Portrait of a Dancer” by Yuri Annenkov, from the poster of the Pittoresk cafe in the capricious modern style of Georgy Yakulov to the harsh "Herring" by David Shterenberg, from the salon and languid "Portrait of M. G. Lukyanov" by Konstantin Somov to the colorful and bright "Tverskoy Boulevard" by Aristarkh Lentulov, from the beauties of the merchant Boris Kustodiev to the philosophies of Vasily Kandinsky.

Among the things that are very little known, there are those that were discovered in a new way precisely on “Someone 1917”. Daring to the point of insanity, Lentulov’s painting “Peace, Triumph, Liberation” – where a humanoid dances over a caricatured imperial eagle and naturalistic genitals are drawn on its stylized body – at this exhibition is seen not as a buffoon, but as an ominous one.

In the State Tretyakov Gallery there is an exhibition "Wind of Revolution. Sculpture 1918 - early 1930", In the project's boundaries "The Tretyakov Gallery opens its storerooms."

Mukhina V.I. Wind. 1926-1927.
Bronze. 88 x 54 x 30. Tretyakov Gallery

On the occasion of the centenary of the revolution in Russia, the Tretyakov Gallery opens an exhibition of works by sculptors who witnessed those historical events. On display are portraits of revolutionaries, workers and Red Army soldiers, projects of monuments created according to the plan of monumental propaganda of 1918, as well as works that reflected the spirit of the revolutionary era. The sculptural busts of N.I. Altman, who have not been shown since 1990, as well as "Homeless Children" by I.N. Zhukov and the project of the monument to Karl Marx A.M. Gyurjan, never exhibited after being added to the Gallery's collection in 1929.

Sculpture was the kind of art that the revolutionary power that was establishing itself valued for its huge agitation and propaganda potential. Masters of different generations saw in the revolution a harbinger of a new bright future. They captured the leaders and revolutionaries of their time, as well as the typical faces of the Red Army, peasants, workers, that is, those who sincerely believed in the revolution. In the works created after 1917, the revolutionary era appears stormy, dramatic and many-sided.

Mukhina V.I. The project of the monument to V.M. Zagorsky. 1921.
Bronze. 77 x 31 x 46. base: 5 x 31 x 31. Tretyakov Gallery

Portrait of V.I. Lenin (1920, bronze) is valuable because it was made by N.I. Altman from life in the Kremlin office and reflects the artist's impressions from direct communication with the statesman. In the 1920s, this bust was very famous, but later it was supplanted by N.A. Andreeva. The bust of Lenin is surrounded by sculptural images of his comrades-in-arms: “Portrait of A.V. Lunacharsky" N.I. Altman (1920, bronze) and “Portrait of F.E. Dzerzhinsky" S.D. Lebedeva (1925, bronze).
"Krasnoflotets" A.E. Zelensky (1932-1933, marble), "Portrait of a Red Army soldier" V.V. Adamchevskaya (1930s, bronze), "Worker with a hammer" by I.D. Shadra (1936, bronze) is a heroized collective image of contemporaries, bearing in itself the tension of feelings, the pathos of experiencing revolutionary events of unprecedented scope.

Frikh-Khar I.G. Chapaevsky harmonist Vasya. 1929.
Cement. 71 x 66 x 54. Tretyakov Gallery

The central work of the exhibition is “Wind” by V.I. Mukhina (1927, bronze). The element and the fight against it are filled with metaphorical, philosophical meaning. When moving around the sculpture, you can see how the pose of the female figure is transformed, the position of the arms and legs changes, then it is lost, then it is regained balance. This work is also interesting from the point of view of the establishment in society of a new ideal of the beauty of the female body, when a strongly built, full-bodied, physically strong female worker became a reference point.
For S.T. Konenkov, the theme of the destructive power of the Russian rebellion is connected with the revolution. The image of Stepan Razin (1918-1919, tinted wood) has something in common with folk sculpture and incorporates the folklore perception of the hero associated with the plot of folk songs. “Head of Stenka Razin” is a variation on the theme of the sculptural group “Stepan Razin with a gang”, made by Konenkov in accordance with the plan of monumental propaganda and installed on Red Square near the place where Razin was executed.

Konenkov S.T. Head of Stepan Razin. 1918-1919.
Wood. 54 x 30 x 35. Tretyakov Gallery

Statue of I.D. Shadra "Into the Storm" (1931, bronze) is seen as a symbol of the opposition of the will and consciousness of man to natural and social forces. The incredibly complex pose of the female figure, which violates the concept of static and stability, the broken lines of her silhouette give rise to drama and emotional intensity of the image.
The exhibition displays works that convey the atmosphere of those years and specific episodes of history. Sculpture I.N. Zhukov's Homeless Children (1929, tinted plaster) is evidence of the devastation and chaos that reigned during the Civil War, which followed the First World War and the Revolution. In these turbulent times, a huge number of children found themselves on the street.
An important part of the exposition is the projects of unrealized monuments within the plan of monumental propaganda. They represent that circle of personalities and the ideas they profess, in which the revolutionaries saw the foundation of a new culture. In Moscow, it was supposed to erect monuments to freedom fighters - the biblical Samson and the gladiator Spartacus.

Altman N.I. Portrait of V.I. Lenin. 1920.
Bronze. 51 x 41 x 33. Tretyakov Gallery

Contemporaries were not forgotten either - among them the revolutionary V.V. Vorovsky, as well as V.M. Zagorsky, whose monument project was created by V.I. Mukhina in 1921. Different figures became metaphorical images embodying the spirit of the revolution for sculptors: N.A. Andreeva - blacksmith; at B.D. Queen - slaves breaking the chains. Sketches of two figures of a peasant and a Red Army soldier for the sculptural composition by A.T. Matveev "October" (1927), which have not been shown to the viewer for the last thirty years.

Zhukov I.N. Homeless children. 1929.
Gypsum toned. 53 x 65. Tretyakov Gallery

The exhibition "Wind of Revolution" shows the realities of life in those years and conveys not only anxiety in the face of uncertainty, but also inspiration, nourished by hopes for a happy future. The revolutionary era appears before the viewer in a romantically upbeat vein.

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MOSCOW, September 27 - RIA Novosti. An exhibition of works by Russian artists created during the era of the 1917 revolution, "Someone 1917", opened at the Tretyakov Gallery, for the first time two canvases by Kazimir Malevich were brought to Russia especially for the exhibition from abroad.

"The Tretyakov Gallery, which holds the most significant collection of art of the 20th century, could not pass by this date ... This exhibition is about the attitude of artists in 1917, the most diverse, representing the most diverse points of view, both ethical and political, philosophical, aesthetic. This is such polyphony, which at the same time falls upon you. This is, to the very last degree, a reflection of the political events that took place before the eyes of these artists," Zelfira Tregulova, head of the Tretyakov Gallery, said at the opening of the exhibition.

According to her, the exhibition features works from 36 museum and private collections in Russia and Europe. "I would like to draw your attention to the fact that for the first time in Russia, two of Malevich's principal works are shown. They are marked "1916", but, according to all experts, this is the end of 1916 - the beginning of 1917. This is the work of Malevich from the Tate Gallery and his or “Suprematism” from the Ludwig Museum in Cologne,” said the head of the Tretyakov Gallery. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to see the work of Marc Chagall from the Pompidou Gallery in Paris at the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val.

As noted in the museum, the exhibition raises the question of the place of art in a critical era. The goal of the project is to move away from stable stereotypes and come closer to understanding the complex picture of the most important period in the life of Russia. "Art in front of an unknown reality" - this is how the curators conditionally designated the topic, choosing a new approach to its presentation. They abandoned both the usual iconographic principle - the display of works depicting revolutionary events, and the traditional convergence of the political revolution with the art of the avant-garde. The exhibition has been in preparation for more than three years.

Also on Wednesday, the museum opened the exhibition "Wind of Revolution. Sculpture of 1918 - early 1930s", which presents portraits of revolutionaries, workers and Red Army soldiers, projects of monuments created according to the plan of monumental propaganda of 1918, as well as works that reflected the spirit of the revolutionary era .

"We tried to show in this exhibition completely different sides of how sculptors created and felt in this era. These are the leaders, among whom there is a unique portrait of Lenin by Altman, which the audience has not seen for many decades. This is a civil war, noticeable, nameless heroes , but there are things that are exhibited for the first time," said Irina Sedova, head of the museum's sculpture department.

Image copyright Getty Images

The October Revolution of 1917, breaking the old order, gave rise to a new culture. The artists of the young country of the Soviets created bold and innovative works - of course, for the benefit of the state. However, the era of experimentation was short-lived, says a columnist who visited an exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts.

If this steel spiral structure had actually been built, it would have surpassed the Eiffel Tower by 91 meters - the tallest man-made structure in the world at that time.

And it would have retained the title of the tallest building in the world for more than 50 years - until 1973, when the first tenants moved into the offices of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

• "Left! Left! Left!"

The Monument to the Third International, also known as Tatlin's Tower, was designed by Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin in 1919, after the October Revolution of 1917. His project was distinguished by a radical novelty of approach.

The steel frame was supposed to contain three geometric shapes made of glass - a cube, a cylinder and a cone. It was assumed that they would rotate around their axis at a rate of one revolution per year, per month and per day, respectively.

In the inner part, it was planned to place the hall of congresses, the chamber of the legislative assembly and the information office of the III Communist International (Comintern) - an organization that was engaged in the dissemination of the ideas of world communism.

Image copyright Victor Velikzhanin/TASS Image caption Model of the unrealized project of the monument to the III International ("Tatlin's tower")

The total height of the tower would have been over 396 meters.

However, this expensive (Russia was an impoverished country in which a civil war was going on at that time) and impractical (is such a construction possible in principle and where, after all, to get so much steel?), an incredibly bold symbol of modernity was never built.

Today it is familiar to us only from photographs of the original model destroyed long ago and reconstructions.

Tatlin was a radical avant-garde artist before the Bolshevik takeover; his pre-revolutionary structures of wood and metal, which he called "counter-reliefs", were much more modest in size than his tower, but they turned the traditional idea of ​​\u200b\u200bsculpture upside down.

The task of the Soviet artist was to create works for the people and the new society

Soon Tatlin became the main apologist for revolutionary art, whose task was to support the utopian ideal of the country of the Soviets.

A new direction in art, resolutely rejecting the whole past, was intended for citizens of the new world, aspiring exclusively to the future.

It became known as "constructivism" and took its place in the avant-garde column - next to the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich (whose "Black Square", painted in 1915, represents a kind of milestone in painting) and his follower El Lissitzky.

Image copyright Alamy Image caption The symbolism of the poster by El Lissitzky "Beat the Whites with a Red Wedge": The Red Army crushing the barriers of anti-communist and imperialist forces

The magnificent geometric abstractions of Suprematism turned easel painting into the most radical example of the use of pure forms and colors, and it was Lissitzky who most energetically placed Suprematism at the service of power.

Created by him in 1919, the lithograph "Beat the Whites with a Red Wedge" is politicized to the limit.

The red wedge, crashing into the white circle, symbolizes the Red Army, crushing the barriers of the anti-communist and imperialist forces of the White Army.

In this early work, space is skillfully played with empty and occupied by objects. Later, this style would give rise to prouns - "projects for the approval of the new," as Lissitzky himself called them: a series of abstract paintings, graphic works and sketches in which the techniques of Suprematism would be transferred from two-dimensional to three-dimensional visual dimension.

Interestingly, in the 1980s, it was this work that inspired Billy Bragg to name his band of Labor activist musicians the Red Wedge.

Children of the revolution

Thinking about the art and design of the first ten Soviet years, we usually remember only such major innovators as the artist Lyubov Popova, who soon called for the abandonment of "bourgeois" easel painting and declared that the task of the artist is to create works for the people and the new society.

Of course, we cannot pass by Alexander Rodchenko, perhaps the greatest photographer, graphic designer and printer of his era.

Image copyright Aleksandr Saverkin/TASS Image caption On the famous poster of Rodchenko (1924), Lilya Brik urges to buy books

However, in those first post-revolutionary years in Russia, there were simultaneously many trends and styles in art.

Not all of them have become famous, because Western art historians have long been interested only in the radical aesthetics of the Russian avant-garde.

At the same time, they readily turn a blind eye to its political overtones and do not pay attention to the substantive part, emphasizing only the purely formal aspects of art.

For the sake of justice, it must be admitted that the same fate was destined for religious and mystical works of art (let's take as an example at least the esoteric motifs that permeate the history of modernism). It is enough for us to perceive these works as picturesque canvases and forms: we ignore most of the symbols, which no longer tell us anything.

The author of the sculpture "Worker and Collective Farm Woman", which became the quintessence of the Soviet style, and the winner of five Stalin Prizes, left behind a huge number of unfulfilled plans (she called them dreams on the shelf). Among them is the demonic composition "Flame of Revolution" - the rejected project of the monument to Sverdlov, - the shepherd with a flute, which did not become part of the Tchaikovsky monument erected next to the Moscow Conservatory, the monument to the Chelyuskinites. At the exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery, dedicated to her 125th birthday, the curators decided not to reduce Mukhina to The Worker and the Collective Farm Girl and showed about two dozen of her sketches from the 1910s-1940s.

In addition to the "Worker and Collective Farm Woman" and the implementation of Lenin's plan for monumental propaganda

Mukhina developed a model of a Soviet costume for a Soviet woman who condemned bourgeois excesses, made sculptural portraits of bronze (reminiscent of antique heads and sweeping expressionist figures), worked with glass and drew sketches for theatrical productions.

One can have different attitudes towards pseudo-antiquity with a taste of Stalinism, the enthusiasm of monumental sculptors and the main genre of Soviet art at that time - a production feat. But one can hardly deny their heavy sculptures power and dynamics. Mukhina herself, for example, wrote in 1939: "Style is born when an artist ... otherwise he can no longer feel when the ideology of his century, his people becomes his personal ideology."

"Worker and Collective Farm Woman"

"Worker and Collective Farm Woman"

ITAR-TASS

"Worker and Collective Farm Girl" tells about the totalitarian regime more quickly and more eloquently than history textbooks. Mukhina saw in them the heirs of the St. Petersburg "Bronze Horseman" - Peter I - as well as Minin and Pozharsky, sitting next to the Kremlin. The sculpture was conceived for the World Exhibition of 1937 in Paris, which became the harbinger of World War II. Then "Worker and Collective Farm Girl" from the pavilion of the USSR (designed by Boris) looked at the eagle crowning the German pavilion, and Warsaw Square lay between them.

Mukhina, who won the competition for the realization of the sculpture, did not like Iofan's idea of ​​"equal size of sculpture and architecture." Iofan doubted that Mukhina, who was prone to lyrics, would cope with the project.

More than a hundred people worked on the statue. One “arm is a gondola; a skirt is a whole room, ”Mukhina recalled. She wanted to simultaneously convey "that vigorous and powerful impulse that characterizes our country", and at the same time not crush the audience with the weight of the sculpture. The role of a lightening element was played by a scarf fluttering in the air.

Was subdued by the choice of material - stainless steel. The Parisians noted the logical validity of each line and the swiftness of the heroes' step. Later, Mukhina, however, will be accused on a false denunciation, which she portrayed in the person of the Worker. After the exhibition, “The Worker and the Collective Farm Woman” were supposed to be dismantled, but on the wave of success they decided to return to Moscow - let it stand for five years at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (VSHV). She stood there until 2003 (with the internal frame rotten to the roots), and after six years she lay disassembled into parts and only in 2009 returned to VDNKh.

Monument to Leonid Sobinov at the Novodevichy Cemetery

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It is noteworthy that Mukhina herself considered her best creation not "Worker and Collective Farm Woman", but a decorative dying swan - a memorial sculpture made for the grave of an opera singer. She wanted to present the artist either Lensky or Orpheus descending into Hades - in one of his main images. However, instead of standing between the cypresses, a figure in a chiton appeared a dying bird made in plaster, reminiscent of Vrubel's "Demon Downtrodden" - a hymn to decadence that knows no transformation.

From the monumentalist Mukhina, they did not expect naturalism mixed with sentimentality.

But the widow (by the way, Mukhina's cousin) Nina Ivanovna liked it, and her daughter Svetlana called the swan a Russian song burned with metal. Six years later, in 1941, she translated the sculpture into marble, making a swan with outstretched wings a symbol of transcendent sorrow, and not a materialized torment of physical death.

Faceted glass

Faceted glass

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Mukhina is credited with the design of the Soviet-style faceted glass, which has become part of Russian mythology and the main fetish of the era. However, there are no documents confirming this, of course. The only proof is the connection of the sculptor with the Leningrad Experimental Art Glass Factory, where in the 1930s and 1940s she created, for example, the massive and austere “Kremlin” service made of smoky glass.

At the same time, a state order for another production feat was ripe: it was necessary to make a glass for catering - durable and suitable in shape for dishwashers.

It is believed that the first Soviet faceted glass was produced on September 11, 1943 at a glass factory in Gus-Khrustalny. It had 16 faces and a smooth ring running around the circle. The dimensions of a standard faceted glass are 65 mm in diameter and 90 mm in height. It was ubiquitous in the USSR, from canteens to soda machines, and instantly became as much a sign of the times as, say, a can of Coca-Cola was to America in the 1960s.

Monument at the Novodevichy Cemetery

Monument to Maxim Peshkov at the Novodevichy Cemetery

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Maxim Peshkov, played by Mukhina, is the son of a famous father, painfully experiencing existence in the shadow of a giant of Soviet literature. Thoughtful and concentrated, he almost merged with the Ural gray marble tombstone, only his head protrudes slightly forward.

Gorky wanted to put on his son's grave a simple stone with a bas-relief and the inscription: "His soul was chaos."

Mukhina considered the idea poor and inexpressive. She decided: "Let's take a stone, but let a person be born from it." Then, in 1935, tomb sculptures had to be solemn and elegiac at the same time. Maxim came out ugly at Mukhina's: his face was gloomy, his head was shaved, his hands were stuffed into his pockets. He could become one of the inhabitants of the bottom depicted by Gorky. However, the sense of drama (and not the horror of death) makes the figure calm and, it seems, even majestic.

Monument to P.I. Tchaikovsky near the building of the Moscow Conservatory

ITAR-TASS

In sculpture, Mukhina believed, there should be nothing petty and ordinary, only one big generalized meaning. However, she decided to present Tchaikovsky not as an idol, but as a creator at work. At first she was going to portray him in full growth, conducting an orchestra. Then she stopped at a sitting figure, but the conductor's wave of hands remained. Mukhina was accused of the fact that the composer's posture is unnatural and too graceful, they say, a genius cannot sit cross-legged at the moment of creative insight.

To explain Tchaikovsky's pose, behind the monument she was going to carve a figurine of a village boy playing the flute. It was the composer who listened to his melody, picking it up with a movement of his hand.

But the shepherdess, associated with ancient Greek idylls and ideologically alien to Soviet ideas about music, was ordered to be removed. In 1945, the first version of the monument was rejected by the selection committee. Approval of the second option had to wait another two years. Before her death, Mukhina dictated to her son a letter to the government: she asked to finish the monument and install it. She called Tchaikovsky her swan song, but she never lived to see his discovery in 1954.

Vera Mukhina at work in her studio

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