Russian avant-garde

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Lissitzky, Beat the Whites With the Red Wedge, lithograph, 1919

The Russian avant-garde is an umbrella term used to define the large, influential wave of modern art that flourished in Russia from approximately 1890 to 1930 - although some place its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960. The term covers many separate, but inextricably related, art movements that occurred at the time; namely Symbolism, neo-primitivism, suprematism, constructivism, and futurism. Given that many of these avant-garde artists were born or grew up in what is a present-date Ukraine (including Kazimir Malevich, Alexandra Exter, Vladimir Tatlin, Wassily Kandinsky, David Burliuk, Alexander Arkhipenko, Sonya Delaunay-Terk), some sources also talk about Ukrainian avant-garde.

The Russian avant-garde reached its creative and popular height in the period between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and 1932, at which point the ideas of the avant-garde clashed with the newly emerged state-sponsored direction of Socialist Realism. Notable figures from this era include:

Artists