Friday, February 23, 2018

Russia, the Motherland of Abstract Expressionism?

It is widely surmised that artistic experimentation in USSR had mostly ended with state takeover of the artistic unions, some time in late 1920s and the rest was a belated imitation of the Western artistic movements. But the case continued...

Here I present images of the Russian Abstract Expressionists, who were most active in 1950s or early 1960s, i.e. simultaneously with Pollock and Rothko in the US, and Dubuffet and Wols in Europe.

Ely Bielutin (1925-2012)





Evgenii Mikhnov-Voitenko (1932-1988); but his most innovative work has been done in 1950s





Evgenii Kropivnitskii (1893-1979)




Yakov Chernikhov (1889-1951).

Yakov Chernikhov is better known as an architect and even better--as a designer of fantastic architectural-themed paintings. But his purely abstract output was also significant, though it was closer to Malevich's Suprematism than to the Abstract Expressionism of the fifties.








Tatiana Glebova (1900-1985)

Tatiana Glebova was a relative and a student of Pavel Filonov, the genius. Most of her output was figurative but Thyssen-Bornemissa collection includes some of her Abstract Expressionist work. 




Pavel Zaltsman (1912-1985)


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 P. Zaltsman

                                   

P. Filonov. Pedagogic.