A r t M o o d. ru. gg - The 20th century in the art

Something about Russian art of the 20th century (hope, that it will be interesting) Constructivism

Constructivism may be considered the natural development of the tendency towards abstraction and the quest for new methods of artistic representation characteristic of the early 20th century . First introduced by Tatlin in 1915 (see his Relief of 1914-17), it began with a focus on abstraction through "real materials" in "real space. " After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, Constructivism was embraced by most of the avant-garde artists. The Constructivists heralded the death of easel painting and asserted that the artist was a researcher, an engineer, and an "art constructor."

Cubism

Cubism (a name suggested by Henri Matisse in 1909) is a non-objective approach to painting developed originally in by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque around 1906. It represents forms in essential geometric shapes: the cube, the sphere, the cylinder, and the cone. The Cubist palette was restricted to a narrow, almost monochromatic scale, dominated by grays and browns. In particular, the Russian Cubists carried even further the abstract potential of the style. Some of the most outstanding Cubist works came from the brush of Malevich, Popova, and Udal'tsova.

Cubo-futurism

Cubo-futurism developed in around 1910. It was essentially a synthetic style, a reinterpretation of the French Cubism (Picasso and Braque) and Italian Futurism (Marinetti, Boccioni) popular at that time in Europe, combined with a strong Neo-primitivist belief in the dynamic possibilities of color and line. The Cubo-futurist movement attracted such talented artists as Goncharova, Larionov, Popova, Malevich, Tatlin, and many others. In Russian interpretation, sometimes there is no significant difference between a Cubist and Cubo-futurist painting. Both feature bold colors, and the fragmentation of the objects on the canvas' surface. Perhaps Cubo-futurism places more emphasis on movement and action. The Knife-Grinder shows some of Cubo-futurism's most characteristic features, including.

the fragmentation of forms (derived from Cubism)

the focus on movement (from Futurism)

the bold colors and lines (from Neo-primitivism

a general departure from objectivity.

Neo-primitivism
In the West, Neo-primitivism was an aftermath of the exhibition of the folk arts of Africa, , and Oceania in Paris. In it flourished between 1907-1912. Neo-primitivism was championed by Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Goncharova, Larionov, Malevich, Tatlin, even Chagall and Kandinskii. Neo-primitivist canvasses share with icons a pronounced one-dimensionality (flatness), lack of depth and perspective, distortions of "reality," as well as a bold, striking colors. Although the forms are intentionally distorted and resemble children's pictures, the paintings' rhythm and harmony come from "the music of color and line". Larionov's Soldier in the Woods: the proportions of the composition are distorted -- the horse is small and the head and hands of the soldier are unusually large. Moreover, Larionov employs a limited number of primary colors, applied without shading and blending.
Rayonism
Rayonism, an ephemeral style which lasted only about a year, was not only unique to , but to the entire world. It was invented by Mikhail Larionov and practiced mostly by him and his companion Natalia Goncharova. Introduced to the public in 1913 at the Target exhibition, Rayonism was described as "naturally encompassing all existing styles and forms of the art of the past, as they, like life, are simply points of departure for a Rayonist perception and construction of a picture". The central feature of Rayonism is the "crossing of reflected rays from various objects;" to this end, its most powerful tools are color and line. Although short-lived, Rayonism proved to be a crucial step in the development of Russian abstract art. As Larionov said, it represented the "true freeing of art" from the former "realistic" conventions that had so "oppressed" the artistic community.
Suprematism
Suprematism, considered "the first systematic school of abstract painting in the modern movement", was developed by Kazimir Malevich in 1913 and introduced at the 1915 0-10 exhibition in St. Petersburg. He wrote about the painting and about Suprematism: "When, in the year 1913, in my desperate attempt to free art from the ballast of objectivity, I took refuge in the square form and exhibited a picture which consisted of nothing more than a black square on a white field, the critics and, along with them, the public sighed, "Everything which we loved is lost. We are in a desert . . . . Before us is nothing but a black square on a white background!" . . . . Even I was gripped by a kind of timidity bordering on fear when it came to leaving "the world of will and idea," in which I had lived and worked and in the reality of which I had believed. But a blissful sense of liberating nonobjectivity drew me forth into the "desert," where nothing is real except feeling . . . and so feeling became the substance of my life. This was no "empty square" which I had exhibited but rather the feeling of nonobjectivity. . . . Suprematism is the rediscovery of pure art that, in the course of time, had become obscured by the accumulation of "things" . . . . The black square on the white field was the first form in which nonobjective feeling came to be expressed.
As we can see, Malevich stresses almost endlessly that the name of the new style refers to the supremacy of pure feeling in art over art's objectivity. The simplest geometric forms -- a square, a triangle, a circle, and intersecting lines -- composed into dynamic arrangements on the flat surface of the canvas or into spatial constructions (sometimes called architectons) -- are to express the sensation of speed, flight, and rhythm...