Apartment no. 5. To the History of the Petrograd Avant-Garde. 1915-1925

The exhibition familiarizes the public with a significant episode in the history of the Russian avant-garde and artistic life of Petrograd during World War I and first post-revolutionary years. Apartment no. 5 (17, University Embarkment) was a real address of the former Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Petrograd, where there was a service residence of S.K. Isakov, a stepfather of the brothers Nikolai and Lev Bruni. Owing to the memoirs by the famous art critic and avant-garde theorist N.N. Punin, this address lent its name to the creative community of young artists, poets, writers, musicians and critics, who used to gather here in the mid-1910s. The “core” of the Apartment no. 5 consisted of Lev Bruni, Petr Miturich, Nikolai Tyrsa, Petr Lvov, Nathan Altman and Nikolai Punin, who chose Vladimir Tatlin and Velimir Khlebnikov as their gurus. Later on, the circle of artists expanded, accepting new members – Vladimir Lebedev, Nikolai Lapshin, Alexei Uspensky, Nikolai Kupreyanov. The community arisen at this address soon had gone beyond it, becoming a denotation of the whole tendency/school in the art of Petrograd, which was clearly appreciable until the mid-1920s.
The exhibition attempts to reconstruct the artistic context of that time to show this phenomenon as an intrinsic part of the Russian avant-garde. About 150 works (painting, graphics) from collections of the State Russian Museum, State Tretyakov Gallery, A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, Russian Academy of Fine Arts Museum, as well as from private collections, are exposed.

The exhibition is supported by: Peter und Irene Ludwig Foundation, Group of UNIDENT companies, Cultural Charitable Foundation U-Art.