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Proto-Modern: Photographic Innovation of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1919-1939
Curated by Steve Yates
Proto-Modern: Photographic Innovation of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1919-1939, traces the history of this movement with rare photographic works in a variety of media, including original photographs, montages, collages, avant-garde journals, posters, film and theatre as well as experiments in mixed media. Rarely seen and largely unpublished works from Russian state and private collections are assembled together in this exhibition for the first time.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, Russia was one of the leading centers of modernism. But unlike other European countries where the search for new ways of visual expression was a natural consequence of the overall evolution of art, the Russian innovations in modern arts were encouraged by a unique historic experiment that was the Russian October Revolution of 1917, and the building of the first socialist state in the world. Russian artists, among the first to grasp the idea of the object as a sign, were certainly the first to interpret artistic problems in close relation to the radical changes to life in their nation. The resulting artistic and intellectual output created distinct, powerful, and inimitable art forms which still continue to astound, shock, and inspire.
Exhibition curator Steve Yates illuminates one of the most potent movements in art and social history, presenting pioneering efforts and collaborations by Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Dziga Vertov, Gustav Klutsis and Valentina Kulagina, Georgi and Vladimir Stenberg, El Lissitzky, Boris Ignatovich, Georgi Zelma, and others, who expressed the changing values of their lives and culture during this turbulent era and took modern photographic art to new heights.
Steve Yates was the former Curator of Photography at Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a three-time Fulbright Scholar (Russia 2006–2007, 1995, and USSR 1991).
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