Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932

Fantastic exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at how art and design was used following the Russian Revolution to embed its ideals.

From the wonderful red of the first room I was hooked and my O level history came rushing back! The show concentrated on art but incorporated posters, textiles, ceramics and film. It  also blended the art and history well. It didn’t assume you knew the history but wasn’t patronising in its narrative. The rooms were a good mix of themes and looking at artists.

I discovered lots of fascinating modern artists I’d not come across before. I loved the portraits of Lenin by Issak Brodsky. I also kept being drawn to work by Pavel Filonov such as a picture of a tractor workshop with tractor parts forming the pattern in the middle of the composition. I also liked his dense pictures, which he called formula, which looked a bit like maps on first view but were lots of small images brought together in pattern.

I loved the reconstruction of Malevich’s room at the 1932 exhibition “Fifteen Years of Artists of the Russian Soviet Republic” which brought together nearly all the pictures in a photograph of the show shown nearby.  Later in the show there was a room dedicated to Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin which was full of lovely colourful still-lives.

The show dealt with big themes well using the art cleverly to show off the subject but allowing it to be interesting work in its own right. Rooms including industrialisation, the peasants, city life, cultural life and idea of Mother Russia.

As I said I loved the way the show incorporated design and it was a great idea to include a reconstruction of a standard apartment complete with the cityscapes which were viewable through the windows. I so want some the textiles shown as cushion covers, who can resist a repeat pattern of tractors!

Closes on 17 April 2017.

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