John E. Bowlt

A major resource, collecting essays, articles, manifestos, and works of art by Russian artists and critics in the early twentieth century, available again at the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution

During the first third of the twentieth century, Russian art went through a series of dramatic changes, reflecting the political and social upheavals of the country and producing a body of influential avant-garde work.

Although the revolutionary years saw much support for the new art and its application to graphic and industrial design, many artists felt the increasingly oppressive political attitudes and left for Western Europe. Kandinsky, Malevich, Gabo, Pevsner, and others are well known for their important contribution to the history of modern Western art, but there were many lesser-known artists whose statements have never been read outside their own country.

Here John E. Bowlt has collected and translated manifestos, articles, and declarations by the principal artists and critics of the Russian avant-garde. Illustrated with more than 100 rare photographs of artworks and written works as well as facsimiles, and supplemented by clear introductory essays, bibliographical information, and copious notes, this is the essential sourcebook for a full understanding of the motivations and struggles that produced an extraordinary, seminal epoch in Russian art.… (mere)

Before meeting Igor Stravinsky in 1921 in Paris, Vera Arturovna Sudeikin-Stravinsky (1888-1982) was already known as the "Muse of the Muses" in what had been the bohemian, intellectual life of St. Petersburg-Petrograd. Hers was the "Silver Age" of Russian culture, when symbolism reigned in the cabarets and the artistic process itself was a form of celebration. As the habitués of this world fled the Bolsheviks, Vera, an artist and writer in her own right, managed to preserve their heritage in an extraordinary literary production: an album containing poems, sketches, fragments of music, and other dedications by some of the most influential Russian cultural figures of the day. The Album, reproduced here for the first time, is both a record of a cultural diaspora and a monument to the Russian fin de siècle.

In 1917 Vera fled to the south of Russia with her then-husband Sergei Sudeikin, a renowned painter and stage designer for the Ballets Russes. They traveled three years throughout the Crimea, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, organizing artistic gatherings at many of their stops. Vera recorded her impressions of the journey and along the way invited her famous friends to make creative offerings to her Album. Together they produced a "literature of loss"--of city and country, of childhood, of an entire era. The material, much of which has never been published, includes poems by Osip Mandelstam, Konstantin Balmont, and Mikhail Kuzmin; musical fragments by Vladimir Pol and Igor Stravinsky; and drawings and watercolors by Boris Grigoriev, Lado Gudiashvili, Sergei Sudeikin, the Zdanevich brothers, and Vera herself.

The Album survived war, revolution, and exile, but it was never published until now. In this edition, which reproduces every page of the Album in full color, John Bowlt uses Vera's diaries along with many other sources to explain the stories behind the entries. The biographical information, dates, and places, all accompanying each entry, will help today's readers form a vivid picture of a fascinating era, and an understanding of an extraordinary woman and the cultural liaisons that made up her world.… (mere)

THE ISMS OF ART IN RUSSIA, 1907 – 1930
1977

Published by Galerie Gmurzynska on the occasion of an exhibition at the gallery space in Cologne, prepared in collaboration with Szymon Bojko. Edited by Krystyna Gmurzynska.

Text contributions by John E. Bowlt, Anna Leporskaya, Alla Povelikhina, Paul Mansouroff, Miroslav Lamač, Valentine Marcadé, Jean-Claude Marcadé, and Eberhard Steneberg.
Historical writings by Mikhail Matyushin and Nadezhda Udaltsova.

24.5 x 22 cm, 216 pages with 206 illustrations, partly in color. Hardcover. German and English.… (mere)