Russian culture in the first half of the 20th century is divided into two different periods: the 1910s-1920s and the 1930s-1950s. The artistic situation in the 1910s-1920s was lively and changeable, as it came under the considerable influence of global historical developments. This period's culture is full of opposing tensions: the flight of artistic fantasy clashes with the desire to produce detailed documentary representations of reality, just as the logical foundation of the abstract language of art opposed the revival of classic traditions.
The avant-garde appeared during the first quarter of the century. This movement formed as a reaction to academic art.
The masters of this trend believed that the goal of art was to construct life, not to imitate visible forms of nature. They thought that for artistic creation the time of stories about life had passed.
Scientific and technological breakthroughs in the early 20th century radically changed the way people thought. Accustomed world-views were swiftly changing. Avant-garde artists expressed values of a different order, rather than human relationships. Thus, V.V. Kandinsky believed that an epoch of spirituality was at hand and that people had to prepare for it. The goal of art, as he saw it, was to free the imagination, to lead it away everyday earthly life. The painter was to show the emotional and psychological nature of man through movement of colour, not through copies of object forms ("Composition No. 7"). Kandinsky provided the basis for the principles of Abstract Expressionism.
K.S. Malevich thought that even the visual image of the world would soon change. He believed that the task of art was to design the environment, not reproduce its forms. This position moved him to rejecting the depiction of object forms. Malevich created his own aesthetically philosophical system of Suprematism. He was the forefather of Geometrical
abstraction.
A similar process could be seen in literature, the theatre and later in music. The role of the "raw material" was reviewed in every art form: it was the object for fine art, the word for literature, the sound for music and the actor for the theatre.
It was the Russian art in the second decade of the 20th century that advanced the principle of abstract creation. This trend became a priority for contemporary painting. "Black Suprematist Square" (1915) by K.S. Malevich has become a symbol of 20th century art and is no less famous than Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa".
The experiments of these masters prompted the ideas of Constructivism, another powerful movement which emerged on the Russian art scene. It determined architectural styles in the first half of the century. A.M. Rodchenko, L.S. Popova, El (L.M.) Lissitzky and other young artists came to the conclusion in the early 1920s that art should form the aesthetic of the industrial and everyday environment of man. Constructivists were the inspiration for early Soviet design.
The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 affected differently both the fate of Russian culture and its individuals. Many of them saw the revolution as the forebearer of a new world to come, a new era. Artistic associations with different aesthetic aims emerged in 1920s. Yet their manifestos and declarations had one thing in common: we are living in a special time, they proclaimed, and the task of art is to find means of expression capable of representing its essence.
Some students of Constructivist artists questioned their masters' credo. They believed that art must not be concentrated
in the sphere of production. Easel painting had not lost its importance, but it needed to be rejuvenated. They created the Society for Easel Painters. Members strove to represent the construction rhythm of the new life in their paintings, relying on the aesthetics of Constructivism and Expressionism (A.A. Deineka, "Building New Workshops", 1926).
Unlike the easel painting masters, the artists of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia believed that the
essence of the heroic epoch was to be expressed in the forms of "heroic realism", and with documentary detail. They criticised avant-garde experiments long before the decrees on the fight against Formalism. The dream to transform the world in the avant-garde projects was destroyed by contact with reality, whereas association representatives who produced the prototype of Socialist Realism art came increasingly to the fore.
Relying on the traditions of the Peredvizhniki, they painted those events and phenomena which marked the birth
of the new society and the new world (E.M. Cheptsov, "Meeting of the Village Communist Cell", 1924). The country's
leadership chose their programme as the best one corresponding to the socialist world outlook.
In 1932 the Central Committee of the All-Russia Communist Party (B) issued a decree abolishing all artists' groups and societies. A single Artists' Union was created, and the lively atmosphere of cultural debate disappeared. The theory of Socialist Realism formed in the mid-1930s. All artists were to follow this method. Their art was to represent the events and the heroes that would set the tone for the socialist society's bright future. Depictions of the masses applauding their leaders were valued above all else in this process (А.М. Gerasimov, "I. Stalin and K. Voroshilov in the Kremlin",
1938). This situation dominated Russian culture until the end of 1950s.
However, even under Stalin there were artists who remained faithful to the principles of free creation. Their works represented their dramatic time without false pathos, while they retained the artists' sincere intonation (A.D. Drevin, "Gazelles", 1930-1931; P.P. Konchalovsky, "Portrait of V.E. Meyerhold", 1937).
