Jean Claude Marcadé, Russian Futurism
Two political revolutions punctuate Russian history in the 20th Century: the 1905 Revolution that ended tsarist absolutism, and the 1917 Revolution that swept away the former regime and completely upset, in so doing, world political and economic data. During the interim period between these 2 revolutions, another revolution took place, the artistic revolution of the 20th Century that, in Paris, Munich, Berlin, Milan, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Odessa, radically overturned nearly six centuries of renascent laws. In Russia this revolution was called “Russian Futurism” and is the first part of what was to become known as the “Russian Avant Garde” or “Russian 20th Century School”.
This book, the first of its kind, is devoted precisely to this special moment when the foundations were laid for all this Century’s art.
In under a decade new plastic laws were assimilated (impressionism, post-impressionism, cezannism, cubism, italien futurism) and quite unknown pictorial cultures were created, which have remained to date a lesson and an inexhaustible source of means of apprehending reality: neo-primitivism, cubo-futurism, rayonnism, suprematism, counter-contrasts, analytism, organicism. Artistic movements appeared to which artists who can be counted amongst the greatest of this Century are attached: Larionov, Malévitch, Tatline, Filonov, Yakoulov, Matiouchine, and the astonishing unique series of women artists such as Natalia Gontcharova, Alexandra Exter, Lioubov Popova, Nadiejda Oudaltsova, Maria Siniakova and Eléna Gouro.
(© Dessain & Tolra, Paris 1989)