Pre-Revolutionary Avant-Garde Artists in Stalinist Russia: Navigating the Crisis of Artistic Innovation and Challenges of the Era

• In Event: Creative Resilience and Adaptation: Artistic Endeavors from the Empire's Fall to the Stalinist Era

Abstract

The proposed paper delves into the wide variety of constraints, both internal and external, experienced by the older generation of avant-garde artists from the Russian Empire—among them Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin—in the Soviet Union of the 1930s. Struggling with adapting to the new cultural and political environment, particularly to Socialist Realism, they also experienced artistic crises caused by their belief that artistic innovation was the most important quality in an artwork and being no longer able to align their work with this principle.

Author

• Maria Timina, Amherst College