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The Amazons of the Avant-Garde

by Eva Lake/Greenwich Village Gazette

p now at the Guggenheim in New York is an exhibition called Amazons of the Avant-Garde: Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Razanova, Varvara Stepanova and Nadezhda Udaltsova. Otherwise, the female contingent of the Russian Avant-garde art movement which happened during the revolution.

The point of the exhibition is that while the forms of art and communication were in changes and upheaval, so were the roles of the people who were making them. This is the strongest appearance we've seen of women making very valuable contributions to art right along side of the men. If you were to look at a list of the 20 most active artists of this movement, at least 5 or 6 would be women and they are here in this exhibition. This is the first show I am aware of which singles out those artists or indeed makes a recognition of how the roles of women were changing.

Ever since the late 70s and early 80s, there's been a reexamination of the Russian avant-garde. Their typography and use of red, black and white has slowly seeped into out own forms of advertising and graphics and art, Barbara Kruger being just one example. Punk and New Wave art and correspondence art really soaked up this graphic style.

As to painting, the work in particular of Laroinov and Goncharova was very influential, coming on strong right at the turn of the century, before Kandinsky or Malevich or Tatlin. Natalia Goncharova, along with Mikhail Larionov, kicked off the revolution in Russian art with their own movement called Rayonism, based on "the crossing of reflective rays from various objects". It was a way to break from nature and focus on composition and color. Rayonism was a predecessor to Constructivism and also part of the Cubist movement. It opened the way for artists such as Malevich and Kandinsky to depart into total abstraction.

Goncharova was truly an international artist and even showed with the Blaue Reiter group in Munich. Goncharova in particular was a legend in art and life, someone often kicked out of exhibitions. She was also sort of a Colette of her time, famous for her performances, her wild sense of fashion, body painting and self-presentation. She not only performed but designed sets and costumes. While none of these now celebrated women artists made work of the caliber of a Kandinsky or Malevich, actually Goncharova can hold her head up high. It would be great to see a show of just her work and all the documentary photographs and posters of her exploits.

http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/
amazons_of_the_avant_garde/index.html 

http://www.rollins.edu/Foreign_Lang/Russian/gonch.html 

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