Soviet Nonconformist Art

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Beginning of Group Petersberg at New Hermitage Museum

The term Soviet Nonconformist Art refers to art produced in the former Soviet Union from 1953-1986 (after the death of Stalin until the advent of Perestroika and Glasnost) outside of the rubric of Socialist Realism. Other terms used to refer to this phenomenon are "unofficial art" or "underground art."

1 Origins
2 Contributors to the Movement
3 Group Petersberg
4 Group Strengths
5 Group Spreads Out
6 Official Reaction
7 Dissolving of the Movement
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Origins

During the Soviet period, official artistic policy required that artists subscribe to the doctrine of Socialist Realism. Artists who chose their own form of expression, whether it was abstraction, expressionism, conceptual art or performance art, were forced to do so in the privacy of their own homes or studios, and were unable to show this work publicly. Soviet Nonconformist Art therefore includes a variety of artists and different styles that were produced unofficially during the Soviet period.

[edit] Contributors to the Movement

Notable Soviet Nonconformist artists from Russia include Ilya Kabakov, Oleg Vassiliev, Komar and Melamid, Leonid Sokov, Boris Sveshnikov, Vladimir Yakovlev, Anatoly Zverev, Ylo Sooster, Vladimir Nemukhin, Ernst Neizvestny and Oscar Rabine, from Moscow, and Timur Novikov and Afrika (Sergei Bugaev), from St. Petersburg.

[edit] Group Petersberg

An example of this was an artistic group that formed in Leningrad in 1960. An exhibition in the Hermitage Museum was assembled of five artists; V. Kravchenko, V. Uflyand, V. Ovchinnikov, M. Chemiakin and O. Liagatchev. The official name of the exhibit was "Exhibition of the artist". It opened March 30th, 1964 and on April 1st it was shut down by authorities. The director of the Hermitage Mikhail Artamonov was removed from his post. In 1967 M. Chemiakin, O. Liagatchev, E. Yesaulenko, and V. Ivanov penned "Manifest the Petersberg Group".

[edit] Group Strengths

This group had a strong preference for still life and illustrations. M. Chemiakin examines the ideas of the "Métaphysique Synthétisme", a non-conformist manifesto. The group also created illustrations to go with Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. O. Liagatchev was fascinated by semiotic searches, and examples of this are "Kafka", "Intimeniy XX" (both 1973), and "Kompozitsiya -kanon" (1975). The group also included A. Vasiliev, master of picturesque invoices and technical improvisations and V. Makarenko, miniature-painter and metaphysical painter.

[edit] Group Spreads Out

In 1971 M. Chemiakin emigrated to France, and later the United States. O. Liagatchev and A. Vasiliev participated in the exhibitions non-conformist artists at the Community arts centre of Gaz and of Nevskiy in 1974-75.n 1975 O. Liagatchev emigrated to France. Group did not have joint exhibitions and became defunct in 1979.

[edit] Official Reaction

The death of Stalin and Khrushchev's denunciation of his crimes and cult of personality in 1956 created a liberal atmosphere wherein artists felt more freedom to create expressive or personal work without the fear of negative repurcussions. Still, none of the official policies regarding the production of art had changed, which is why the majority of the art that falls under this category remained underground.

[edit] Dissolving of the Movement

Once Glasnost and Perestroika were initiated in the mid-1980's there was no longer a need for this art to remain underground, and thus for all intents and purposes it ceased to exist.

The collectors of Soviet and Russian Non-Conformist art include Tatiana Kolodzei and her daughter, Natalia Kolodzei. In 1991 they founded the Kolodzei Art Foundation which has presented many exhibitions on Russian Non-Conformist art.

[edit] References

Irène Semenoff-Tian-Chansky, Le pinceau, la faucille et le marteau: les peintres et le pouvoirs en Union Soviétique de 1953 à 1989, Institut d'Études Slaves, 1993
Norton Dodge and Alla Rosenfeld, eds. From Gulag to Glasnost: Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995.