The Russian Avant-Gardes: From Chagall to Malevich

The art of the Russian avant-garde numbers among the most diverse and radical chapters of modernism. At no other point in the history of art did artistic schools and artists’ associations emerge at such a breathtaking pace than between 1910 and 1920. Every group was its own programme, every programme its own call to battle - against the past as well as against competing iterations of the present.

The Albertina is devoting a major presentation to the diverse range of art from that era: 130 masterpieces by Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, and Marc Chagall illustrate fundamentally different styles and their dynamic development from primitivism to cubo-futurism and on to suprematism, as well the chronological parallels between figurative expressionism and pure abstraction.

In eleven chapters, Chagall to Malevich traces the brief epoch of the Russian avant-garde as a climactic drama stemming from the diversity of avant-garde movements that were diametrically opposed to one another. Enabling the public to see and experience the visual tensions inherent in this heroic phase of Russian art is the stated goal of this exhibition.

The exhibition is a cooperation of the Albertina, Vienna and the State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg.

http://www.albertina.at/en/from_chagall_to_malevich