Avdei Ter-Oganyan: Radical Abstractionism

Geometric Abstraction at Met

editor — Tue, 10 May 2016 19:38:20 GMT

In Russia, the language of geometric abstraction first appeared in 1915 in the work of the avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) (The Museum of Modern Art), in the style he termed Suprematism. Creating nonobjective compositions of elemental forms floating in white unstructured space, Malevich strove to achieve “the absolute,” the higher spiritual reality that he called the “fourth dimension.” Simultaneously, his compatriot Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953) originated a new geometric abstract idiom in an innovative three-dimensional form, which he first dubbed “painterly reliefs” and subsequently “counter-reliefs” (1915–17). These were assemblages of randomly found industrial materials whose geometric form was dictated by their inherent properties, such as wood, metal, or glass. That principle, which Tatlin called “the culture of materials,” spurred the rise of the Russian avant-garde movement Constructivism (1918–21), which explored geometric form in two and three dimensions. The main practitioners of Constructivism included Liubov Popova (1889–1924), Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891–1956) (The Museum of Modern Art), Varvara Stepanova (1894–1958), and El Lissitzky (1890–1941). It was Lissitzky who became the transmitter of Constructivism to Germany, where its principles were later embodied in the teachings of the Bauhaus. Founded by the architect Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919, it became during the 1920s (and until its dismantling by the Nazis in 1933) the vital proponent of geometric abstraction and experimental modern architecture. As a teaching institution, the Bauhaus encompassed different disciplines: painting, graphic arts, stage design, theater, and architecture. The art faculty was recruited from among the most distinguished painters of the time: Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers, all of whom were devoted to the ideal of the purity of geometric form as the most appropriate expression of the modernist canon. Read more...

Alexander Rodchenko at Tretyakov Gallery

editor — Tue, 10 May 2016 19:23:18 GMT

Exhibition view. Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism, 2009. Source

Rodchenko’s abstract art from the period 1915–1920 is a permanent experiment with form, “inventing new discoveries.” The “root” idea of the artist was to destroy the material and clear existence of an object in the space of the canvas. And although “the forms still exist, fly, hover” in works of his “black period,” it is difficult to catch “what is the space, what kind of space it is, and what is the shape in it, and how this shape exists.” Texture in the painting swallows up all the elements – colour, light, volume and space. The artist wrote: “In the works there appears an ‘abstract quality of painting’ and a texture of the surface, all kinds of empty spaces and glazes, etc…in other words a painterly approach to the canvas. Beginning now the picture ceased to be a picture and became a painting or a thing.” Rodchenko’s “black things” stand, as it were, on the boundary between old dead art and the new live art. They are a direct denial of the symbolic and depictive functions which had weighed down painting and taken it away from its very painterly essence. Source

Suprematism (c.1913-18)

editor — Tue, 10 May 2016 17:52:55 GMT

Suprematism was a Russian abstract art movement, founded by the Kiev-born painter Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935) around 1915, which concerned itself with elementary geometric forms (squares, circles). It was one of several modern art movements developed in Russia during the early 20th century: others included Russian Futurism (c.1912-14) founded by Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), Rayonism (1912-15) founded by Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964); and Constructivism (c.1919-1930) founded by Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953). Suprematism eclipsed Rayonism and coexisted with Vladimir Tatlin's Constructivism during the period of the Russian Revolution up until 1921. Read more...

Malevich at Tate Modern

editor — Tue, 10 May 2016 17:47:39 GMT

Kazimir Malevich, Supremus No. 55 1916. Source: Krasnodar Territorial Art Museum

Kazimir Malevich, an artist as influential as he was radical, cast a long shadow over the history of modern art. This, his first retrospective in thirty years and the first ever in the UK, unites works from collections in Russia, the US and Europe to tell a fascinating story of revolutionary ideals and the power of art itself...

His early experiments as a painter led him towards the invention of suprematism, a bold visual language of abstract geometric shapes and stark colours, epitomised by the Black Square. One of the defining works of Modernism, the painting was revealed to the world after months of secrecy and was hidden again for almost half a century after its creator’s death. It sits on a par with Duchamp’s ‘readymade’ as a game-changing moment in twentieth century art and continues to inspire and confound viewers to this day. Read more...

What Makes Geometric Abstraction So Exciting?

editor — Tue, 10 May 2016 17:36:39 GMT

Above: A section of Suprematist works by Kazimir Malevich exhibited for the first time at the 0.10 exhibition

By Andrew M. Goldstein
Aug. 16, 2014

Following the developments of Cubist and Futurist painting—in which the natural world was translated into a stark pictorial language of shapes, lines, and angles—Russia was one of the primary breeding grounds of pure abstraction, with Wassily Kandinsky doing much to popularize geometric art before gravitating to the gestural camp in later years. But it was Kazimir Malevich who today is often viewed as the forefather of geometric abstraction, beginning with his seminal 1915 paintings of black shapes—a circle, a square—on a white ground, and his legendary white-square-on-white-canvas 1919 monochrome. Read more...