Russian Revolutionary Avant-Garde free essay sample

Ideology, politics, leadership, style of early 20th Cent. Russian art, focusing on Constructivism. During the Cold War, the prevailing Western view of Soviet art was that the Communists had driven out the once flourishing Russian avant-garde and replaced it with Socialist Realism. In fact, state-mandated Realist art was only imposed on artists by Stalin in the early 1930s. In the years before, during, and after the Revolution of 1917, the avant-garde of Futurists, Suprematists, Constructivists, Productivists and other movements saw their work as being appropriately, positively Revolutionary. As Bodine notes, the avant-garde artists of Russia moved to the forefront of cultural activity as a result of their allegiance with the emerging theories of the political revolution. After 1917, the political revolution welcomed the support of these avant-garde groups for the simple reason that the new government found them to be, the only section of the artistic..