Natalia Avtonomova

Natalia Avtonomova
WINDOW TO THE WEST

#1 2021 (70), Special issue. GERMANY - RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

October 2022 marks 100 years since the opening of the legendary First Russian Art Exhibition, which took place at the Van Diemen Gallery in Berlin. It is difficult now to appreciate the significance of this far-reaching exhibition for Russia and for Western Europe—it undoubtedly played a key role in the development of experimental European art on through the 1920s and 1930s. The isolation caused by the World War II and various revolutions having subsided, in Europe new friendships and cultural exchanges arose between artists across the continent, as well as a wave of avant-garde exhibitions. Russian non-figurative art—“Malevich’s suprematism” and “Tatlin’s pro-constructivism” — began to gain popularity and spread quickly across art’s world stage. The constant flow of emigration from Russia undeniably facilitated this process.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

NATALIA AVTONOMOVA
Marking the150th Anniversary of Wassily Kandinsky's Birth

#2 2017 (55)

In 2016 the art world celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944). In Russia, the country where Kandinsky, the founder and theoretical architect of abstract art, was born, this was marked by a number of exhibitions in the country's major museums, as well as international conferences hosted by the leading Moscow higher educational institutions.

NATALIA AVTONOMOVA
WASSILY KANDINSKY IN NORWAY

Special issue. NORWAY–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

Exhibitions of paintings by the prominent artist and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky, one of the leaders of the avant-garde movement, became a significant event in the cultural life of Norway at the beginning of the 20th century. Kandinsky’s works were exhibited there twice, first in 1914 at the “Der Blaue Reiter” (Blue Rider) exhibition (in Christiania, now Oslo, in February-March, and in Trondheim in April-May), and then in April-June 1916, at a joint exhibition with the German artist Gabriele Münter in Christiania.