Russian Avantgardes

The exhibition offers a survey of the birth and development of Russian avant-garde art during the first third of the 20th century. It begins with an investigation of the quest for a new national art based on Russian folk tradition at the turn of the century. A second section is devoted to early attempts to link up with international European art, in particular Futurism, then moves on to analyse the careers of highly individual artists such as Chagall, Kandinsky and Filonov. The exhibition then looks at post-war organic abstraction and concludes with the most extensive section, devoted to artists’ attempts to go beyond traditional art and convert it into a means of constructing the new man. Painting, sculpture, photography and art in the service of propaganda are among the wide variety of media covered in this exhibition.