The Avant-Gardists

Artists in Revolt in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union 1917–1935

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A fascinating narrative biography of the art movement that transformed the modern world, tracing the lives and activities of the key protagonists as they set about a revolution in art

October 1917. The Russian Revolution wipes the old tsarist empire off the map. Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Lyubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, Vladimir Tatlin and other avant-garde artists participate in the revolutionary struggle, transforming inner cities with their progressive murals, posters, installations and performances. The new political leaders soon want nothing to do with these radical artists. While their reputation is growing in Europe, they experience increasing pressure in the Soviet Union.

Against a background of violent social and political change, author Sjeng Scheijen describes with compassion and humour events that shaped the artistic revolution in this, the first illustrated biography to relate the rise and fall of the leading figures of the Russian avant-garde. From philosophical and political subversion, involvement with the Bolshevik administration and links with Europe, to violent repression, incarcerations and torture in the 1930s under Stalin, events are narrated through artists’ personal memories drawn from existing and important new archival findings. Excerpts from diaries and correspondence reveal the extent of the avant-garde’s energy and determination to survive a totalitarian regime, civil war, hunger and terror.

Scheijen’s vivid, dynamic style, authoritative command of his source material and extensive original research provides exceptional insight into the lives of these avant-gardists, whose art left a lasting legacy that transformed modern art.
Extent: 504 pp
Format: Hardback
Illustrations: 128
Publication date: 2024-05-16
Size: 23.4 x 15.3 cm
ISBN: 9780500024553
Introduction: why we paint our faces!
1. Kazimir Malevich in the Kremlin/ 1917
2. Tatlin, the Pittoresque collective/ 1917-1918
3. A white revolution/ 1917-1918
4. Monumental propaganda! Or, the avant-gardist as bureaucrat/ 1917-1918
5. Tatlin’s tower/ 1919-1921
6. Many avant-gardists in the provinces/ 1919-1922
7. The last laboratory/ 1922-1925
8. Family ties/ 1925-1927
9. Tatlin’s bird/ 1927-1932
10. Farewell/ 1932 and beyond

Press Reviews

A story as gripping as a thriller, and central to 20th-century art history. Scheijen’s account, drawing on artists’ letters, diaries and other substantial archival discoveries, is masterly and moving
Best Summer Books of 2024: Visual Arts, Financial Times

Definitely the best overview of the Russian avant-garde ... based on thorough research, it reads like a detective story
Natalia Murray (Courtauld Institute), curator ‘Revolution’ (2017, RA)

Marvellous … [Scheijen’s] deeply researched study charts in particular the improbable and brief elevation of radical artists to central positions in the Bolshevik administration in the early revolutionary years … It is a story he tells with verve … There is little that could be deemed as superfluous in this compelling and voluminous study
Apollo

Exemplary ... Schiejen’s book is multi-faceted, handsome on the mantelpiece – and blood soaked
The Art Newspaper

About the Author

Sjeng Scheijen is an author and an internationally acclaimed expert on Russian art. He has curated several important exhibitions in London, Groeningen and elsewhere, and is the former cultural attaché to the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Moscow. His previous book, Diaghilev: A Life (2009) received much critical acclaim, being described as ‘masterful’ by the Guardian and ‘magnificent’ by the Daily Mail.

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