The Association of Revolutionary Masters of Ukraine: A Move toward Visual Sovereignty

• In Event: Competing Liberations in the Literature and Art of 1920s Ukraine

Abstract

This paper will analyze the significance of the Association of Revolutionary Masters of Ukraine (ARMU), a group of avant-garde artists existing from 1925-1932, in its capacity as a brief attempt at national liberation in a revolutionary world, reasserting the role of formalist and nationally-oriented arts in the USSR. Given the destruction of art and repression of information about ARMU by the Soviet authorities, the existing research is scant and surface level, so I will trace the history of the formation of the group, some key moments, and its dissolution. I will then show how, in opposition to many competing groups more closely aligned with Socialist Realism, ARMU asserted a project of visual sovereignty with compelling liberatory potential for those in early Soviet Ukraine.

Author

• Samuel Veremchuk, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign