The term "avant-garde" being easily misleading, it appears to me necessary to specify the limits of the subject-matter. The richness of the artistic explosion that Russia experienced between 1896 and 1932 does not permit here the treatment of the subject in its entire range. Hence, I limited myself to explore only the evolution of plastic arts from the emergence of non-objective art in 1915 up to the end of 1921 when ideology and theoretical reflection assume the consequences in apparently opposed, but in fact dialectically interdependent directions. The advent of nonobjective art had been preceded by a glorious symbolist period as well as by an extraordinary cubo-futurist flowering which could by itself constitute the subject of another book. One can say the same for the consequences of non-objective art in the realm of applied arts and more so in that of architecture; the remarkable invention of Russian architects would certainly merit a publication of its own.

Download File Size:18.7 MB

---