The Russian Avant-garde, Siberia and the East

The rituals of Siberian shamans, the ancient funerary sculptures from the steppes seen as a crystallised presence of archaic and everlasting forms of worship, Chinese popular prints, Japanese engravings, Theosophic and Anthroposophic theories and Indian philosophy are but some of the elements that inspired the aesthetic and theoretical pursuits of the new Russian artists and writers just before the October 1917 Revolution.

Written to accompany the exhibition in Florence, this book is devoted to the complex relation between Russian art and the East – be it the Russian East or the Far East – with a special focus on the radical artists who shaped the development of modern art a century ago.

Figures such as Léon Bakst, Alexandre Benois, Pavel Filonov, Natal’ia Goncharova, Wassily Kandinsky, Mikhail Larionov and Kazimir Malevich were deeply aware of the significance of the East for their art, and contributed to launching a rich debate that left a deep and permanent mark on their artistic praxis. The catalogue and the exhibition also draw a connection between the chief representatives of the Russian avant-garde and other lesser-known but just as important artists of the period such as Nikolai Kalmakov, Sergei Konenkov and Vasilii Vatagin, some of whose works are being displayed for the first time in the West.