Russian avant-garde

"Beat the white with the Red wedge", a 1919 lithograph by Lissitzky

The Russian avant garde is an umbrella term used to define the large, influential wave of modernist art that flourished in Russia from approximately 1890 to 1930 - although some place its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960. The term covers many separate, but inextricably related, art movements that occurred at the time; namely neo-primitivism, suprematism, constructivism, and futurism. Notable artists from this era include El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, and Marc Chagall amongst others. The Russian avant garde reached its creative and popular height in the period between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the foundation of the Soviet Union in 1922, at which point the ideas of the avant garde clashed with the newly emerged state-sponsored direction of Socialist Realism.

See also

• Soviet art
• Avant garde
• History of Russia