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It all
begins in 1905.
In Paris, Fauvism bursts noisily into the Salon d'Automne, and the
demise of Bouguereau sounds the death knell of academic painting.
The same year witnesses the birth of Expressionism, with the
formation of Die Brucke in Dresden.
From now on, there will be no break in activity.
Cubism in 1908, with Picasso and Braque; Futurism in 1909, setting
the trend of the pugnacious manifesto—in just four years, the first
revolution of modern art is set in motion.
That revolution is preceded, or accompanied, by the death of its
great percursors: Gauguin dies in 1903, Cezanne in 1906.
As the World's Fair of 1900 pauses for a moment on the threshold
between the past and the future, the new century declares itself a
fighter resolved to win.
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World of Art
[Rus. Mir Iskusstva].
Group of Russian artists and writers active 1898–1906,
revived as an exhibiting society, 1910–24. SERGE DIAGHILEV
provided the motive force for the formation of the group in St
Petersburg in 1898, and for the publication of its journal,
Mir Iskusstva, from 1898 to December 1904. The Nevsky
Pickwickians, grouped around
Alexandre Benois, preceded the
World of Art and formed its initial core. In the first issue
of the journal Diaghilev, who with
Benois had a wide knowledge
of recent western European art, declared his commitment to a
renaissance of Russian art, avoiding pale reflections of
foreign trends yet also resisting a narrow nationalism. The
World of Art provided a focus for Symbolist and Aesthetic
tendencies in Russia, but its diversity of talents meant that
it had only a limited degree of stylistic coherence.
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Russian Silver Age
World of Art (Mir iskusstva)
(From Wikipedia)
Mir iskusstva (Russian:
«Мир иску́сства», World of
Art) was a Russian magazine and the artistic movement it
inspired and embodied, which was a major influence on the Russians
who helped revolutionize European art during the first decade of the
20th century. From 1909, many of the miriskusniki (i.e.,
members of the movement) also contributed to the Ballets Russes
company operating in Paris. Paradoxically, few Western Europeans
actually saw issues of the magazine itself.
History
The artistic group was founded in 1898 by a group of students
that included
Alexandre Benois,
Konstantin Somov,
Dmitry Filosofov,
Leon Bakst,
Eugene Lansere. The
starting moments for the new artistic group was organization of the
Exhibition of Russian and Finnish Artists in the Stieglitz
Museum of Applied Arts in Saint-Petersburg.
The magazine was cofounded in 1899 in St. Petersburg by
Alexandre Benois,
Leon Bakst, and Sergei Diaghilev (the
Chief Editor). They aimed at assailing low artistic standards of the
obsolescent Peredvizhniki school and promoting artistic
individualism and other principles of
Art
Nouveau. The theoretical
declarations of the art movements were stated in the Dyagilev's
articles "Difficult Questions", "Our Imaginary Degradation",
"Permanent Struggle", "In search of the Beauty", "The fundamentals
of the artistic appreciation" published in the N1/2 and N3/4 of the
new journal.
Apart from three founding fathers, active members of the World
of Art included
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky,
Eugene Lansere,
and Konstantin Somov. Exhibitions organized by the World
of Art attracted many illustrious painters from Russia and
abroad, notably
Mikhail Vrubel,
Mikhail Nesterov, and
Isaak Levitan.
In its "classical period" (1898-1904) the art group organized six
exhibitions: 1899 (International), 1900, 1901 (At the Imperial
Academy of Arts, Saint Petersburg), 1902 (Moscow and Saint
Petersburg), 1903, 1906 (Saint Petersburg). The sixth exhibition was
seen as a Dyagilev's attempt to prevent the separation from the
Moscow mebers of the group who organized a separate "Exhibition of
36 artists" (1901) and later "The Union of Russian Artists" group
(from 1903).
In 1904-1910, Mir Iskusstva as a separate artistic
group did not exist. Its place was inherited by the Union of
Russian Artists which continued officially until 1910
and unofficially until 1924. The Union included painters (Valentin
Serov,
Konstantin Korovin,
Boris Kustodiev,
Philip Maliavin,
Zinaida Serebriakova), illustrators (Viktor
Vasnetsov, Ivan Bilibin,
Konstantin Somov,
Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva), restorators (Igor Grabar), and scenic
designers (Nicholas Roerich,
Serge Sudeikin).
In 1910 Benois published a critical article in the magazine "Rech'"
about the Union of Russian Artists. Mir Iskusstva was
recreated. Some said that the inclusion of
the Russian avant-garde painters demonstrated that the group became
an exhibition organization rather than an art movement. In 1917 the
chairmen of the group became
Ivan Bilibin. The same year most
members of Jack of Diamonds enter the group.
The group organazied numerous exhibitions: 1911, 1912, 1913,
1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1921, 1922 Saint-Petersburg, Moscow). The
last exhibition of Mir Iskusstva was organized in
Paris in 1927. Some members of the group entered the Zhar-Tsvet
(Moscow, organized in 1924) and Four Arts (Moscow-Leningrad
organized in 1925) artistic movements.
______
Golden Fleece
[Rus.
Zolotoye Runo].
Russian artistic and literary magazine published monthly in
Moscow during 1906–9. It was financed and edited by the
millionaire Nikolay Ryabushinsky, and it sponsored the first
exhibitions in Russia of modern and of contemporary French
art. In its first two years, this beautifully produced,
well-illustrated and lively magazine was principally dedicated
to Russian Symbolism. The poets Aleksandr Blok, Konstantin
Balmont (1867–1943) and Andrey Bely were regular contributors
and co-editors, as were many painters of the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) generation such as
Alexandre Benois,
Mikhail Vrubel,
Igor Grabar,
Mstislav Dobuzhinsky,
Konstantin Korovin,
Nicholas Roerich,
Konstantin Somov and
Valentin
Serov. The
Blue Rose group were also represented.
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THE STAGE DESIGNERS OF THE BALLETS RUSSES
Russian art had previously been considered barbarous and primitive
by a sophisticated western European public, but its national folklore
aroused great interest when works were shown at the Paris Exposition
of 1900. Seizing every opportunity to promote Russian art, Serge
Diaghilev (1872-1929) organized the exhibition Two Centuries of
Painting and Sculpture in 1906, and brought the music of
Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and Borodin to Paris in 1907. Diaghilev
staged Boris Godunov
in 1908, with sets and costumes by Golovine, Yuon, and
Alexandre Benois, and he launched the Ballets Russes in the following year.
Together with choreographer Fokine and stage designer
Leon Bakst
(1866-1924), he revolutionized the concept of dance (which for him was
the finest art, being a synthesis of all the others), and introduced a
new approach to ballet production.
Bakst's settings used intense, vibrant colours, and exotic, elaborate costumes,
while his stage designs for L'apres-midi d'un faune and
Daphnis et Chloe were legendary. The Ballets Russes moved to Monte
Carlo in 1912, having become an independent company. Gradually, it
moved away from the Russian national tradition, leasing room for
various avant-garde artists to contribute ideas. Diaghilev chose his
stage designers for their talent and ability to enhance music and
movement.
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Sergei Diaghilev
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
born March 31 [March 19, Old
Style], 1872, Novgorod province, Russia
died Aug. 19, 1929, Venice, Italy
Russian promoter of the arts who revitalized ballet byintegrating the
ideals of other art forms—music, painting, and drama—with those of the
dance. From 1906 he lived in Paris, where, in 1909, he founded the
Ballets Russes. Thereafter he toured Europe and the Americas with his
ballet company, and he produced three ballet masterpieces by Igor
Stravinsky: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of
Spring (1913).
Diaghilev was the son of a major general and a noblewoman, who died in
childbirth. As a youth his artistic sensibilities were encouraged by
his stepmother, Helen Valerianovna Panayeva. He took piano lessons
while at school and also showed a gift for composition.
In 1890, while studying law at the University of St. Petersburg,
Diaghilev became associated with a group of friends interested in the
social sciences, music, and painting—the first of a series of
intellectual gatherings over which he presided throughout his life.
Among his companions during this period were the painters Alexander
Benois and Léon Bakst, both of whom were later to contribute
brilliantly to his productions. In 1893 he made his first journey
abroad, visiting Germany, France, and Italy, where he met the
distinguished French novelist Émile Zola and the opera composers
Charles Gounod and Giuseppe Verdi.
In 1896 Diaghilev graduated in law, but he was determined to follow a
musical career. The composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, however,
discouraged him from developing his talents as a composer, wisely no
doubt, since a vocal work of Diaghilev that had been performed in
public had left a poor impression. In Moscow he met the patron of the
famed bass Fyodor Chaliapin and proposed revolutionary scenic ideas
for productions of operas in which Chaliapin appeared. Although he was
uncertain of his own artistic gifts, Diaghilev was convinced of his
vocation: that of a patron of the arts like the Roman Gaius Maecenas.
His theatrical ventures in the sphere of opera and ballet and his
literary projects, demanding huge investments, were hampered by the
fact that he embarked on this career with no private income. Moreover,
in 19th-century Russia, his homosexuality was a serious handicap in
the development of his career. He had personal charm and audacity,
however, and he used them to advantage.
In 1899 he realized the first of these international ventures when he
founded, as editor in chief, the review Mir Iskusstva (“World of
Art”), which continued to appear until 1904. This was a counterpart of
the London Yellow Book, reflecting the ideas of the graphic artist
Aubrey Beardsley and the writer Oscar Wilde. In 1905 Diaghilev
organized a historic portrait exhibition of Russian art treasures at
the Tauride Palace in St. Petersburg.
The great turning point in his life came when he left Russia for Paris
in 1906. It was there that he helped to found what was later referred
to as the Franco-Russian artistic alliance. He organized an exhibition
of Russian art and then, in 1907, a series of historic concerts
devoted to the work of the Russian nationalist composers. In 1908
Modest Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov was produced in Russian by
Diaghilev at the Paris Opéra with Fyodor Chaliapin in the title role.
The time had arrived for him to launch the venture that was to fulfill
his ideal of a combination of the arts. Appointed in 1899 as assistant
to Prince Sergey Volkonsky, director of theImperial Theatre, Diaghilev
had met the dancer Michel Fokine, who was powerfully influenced by the
American dancer Isadora Duncan. Diaghilev, also influenced by the
dance innovations of Duncan, as well as by the ideas of composer
Richard Wagner and the theories of the poet Charles Baudelaire, opened
his season of Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris in
1909. The dancers Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Michel Fokine
were in his company.
Before long it became clear that conventional choreography was to have
no place in Diaghilev's novel spectacles. Mime or action dances were
the aim of the choreographers who, largely under the influence of
Fokine and Léonide Massine, were creating an entirely new tradition.
The composers chosen to transform the old art forms were themselves
inspired by the fantasies of painters and choreographers. This was
Diaghilev's lofty creation: an ideal of artistic synthesis, based on
an innate sense of taste. Diaghilev's art reached its height in the
three early ballets of the young Russian composer Igor Stravinsky:
The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of
Spring (1913). In Petrushka, perhaps the greatest of the
Diaghilev ballets, Stravinsky, at Diaghilev's insistence, transformed
a conventionally conceived piano concerto (on which he had been
working) into a mimed ballet, bringing into real life the fantasy
dramas of puppets at a showman's fair. The incident is indicative of
the extraordinary psychological influence Diaghilev was able to exert
over his collaborators. In The Rite of Spring Stravinsky produced one
of the most explosive orchestral scores of the 20th century, and the
production created an uproar in the Paris theatre at its first
performance. The scandalous dissonances and rhythmic brutality of the
music provoked among the fashionable audience such protestations that
the dancers were unable to hear the orchestra in the nearby pit. They
carried on, nevertheless, encouraged by the choreographer Nijinsky,
who stood on a chair in the wings shouting out and miming the rhythm.
Diaghilev left his native Russia and never returned. In Paris he
collaborated with the French poet Jean Cocteau, among others. He
toured with his ballet throughout Europe, in the United States, and in
South America. Seasons of the Diaghilev ballet were given
uninterruptedly from 1909 to 1929. During his later seasons he
introduced the works of forward-looking composers and painters from
France, Italy, Great Britain, and the United States. Among the
composers represented in his repertory were Richard Strauss, Claude
Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Sergey Prokofiev.
Despite his influence, however, Diaghilev was a lonely and
dissatisfied man, impecunious and personally unhappy. He was an
idealist, never realizing perfection and yet sowing the seed of an
exploratory spirit. Diaghilev had long suffered from diabetes, and by
the end of his brilliant 1929 season at Covent Garden, London, his
health had gravely deteriorated. He nevertheless left for a holiday in
Venice, where he sank into a coma from which he did not recover. He
was buried in the island cemetery of San Michele.
Edward Lockspeiser
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Hagenbund
[Künstlerbund Hagen; Hagengesellschaft].
Austrian group of artists formed in 1900 in Vienna and
active until 1930. Its most prominent members included
Heinrich Lefler and Joseph Urban. The group took its name from
Herr Haagen, the landlord of an inn at which artists often met
for informal discussion. Originally called the
Hagengesellschaft, most of its members left the Künstlerhaus
at the same time as the Secessionists in 1897. Three years
later they left the Secession to form the Hagenbund. At first
the group intended to remain within the Künstlerhaus, and they
held their first two exhibitions on its premises. However,
between 1902 and 1912, and again from 1920 until 1930, they
exhibited independently in a market-hall (the Zedlitzhalle)
converted by Urban. The group favoured a distinct Art Nouveau
style based on folk art and British antecedents, such as the
work of Aubrey Beardsley. Their manner was less extreme than
that of the Secessionists, and this contributed to their
official success; Lefler and Urban were the major contributors
to a pageant held in 1908 in celebration of Francis Joseph’s
60 years on the throne. The influence of the Hagenbund was
felt largely through their illustrations, which were popular
with a younger and less upper-class audience than the
Secessionists had. Most notable was the series Gerlachs
Jugendbücherei, illustrated with lithographs by Lefler,
Urban and Karl Fahringer (1874–1952). Among Austrian artists
who participated in Hagenbund exhibitions were Robin Christian
Andersen, Anton Hanak, Oskar Laske (1874–1951) and, at times,
Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. Although the group was not
dissolved until 1930, its importance had faded by the outbreak
of World War I.
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Heinrich Lefler
(Austrian, 1863-1919)

Heinrich Lefler
Saint George Praying after
Slaying the Dragon
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Joseph Urban
(Austria,1872 – US,1933)

Heinrich Lefler and
Joseph Urban
"Marchen-Kalendar fur das
Jahr 1905"
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Phalanx
Exhibiting society founded by
Vasily Kandinsky and others
in Munich in 1901 and active until 1904 as an important
manifestation of the Jugendstil aesthetic. Founded soon
after Kandinsky’s departure from Franz von Stuck’s studio, it
was the first group for which he served as the main driving
force. The society was advertised in July 1901 in the Munich
periodical Kunst für Alle as having ‘set for itself the
task of furthering common interests in close association.
Above all it intends to help overcome the difficulties that
often stand in the way of young artists wishing to exhibit
their work.’ The choice of name itself suggested the idea of a
close association and also related to the concept of the
phalanx propounded by the French philosopher Charles Fourier
(1772–1837) as the basic unit of his Utopian society . This social aspect also reflected the ideas of
William Morris and other writers associated with the Arts and
Crafts Movement and was an important principle in its
structure. The society attempted to redress the sexual
inequalities found in the Munich Akademie by allowing men and
women equal access to exhibitions and to the school
established in the winter of 1901–2 on Kandinsky’s initiative.
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Photo-Secession
Group of mainly American Pictorialist photographers founded
by ALFRED STIEGLITZ in New York in 1902, with the aim of
advancing photography as a fine art. Stieglitz, who chose the
organization’s name partly to reflect the Modernism of
European artistic Secession movements, remained its guiding
spirit. Other leading members included Alvin Langdon Coburn,
Gertrude Kasebier, Edward Steichen and Clarence H. White. The
Secession also exhibited and published work by Europeans, for
example Robert Demachy, Frederick H. Evans, Heinrich Kuhn and
Baron Adolf de Meyer, who shared the Americans’ attitude that
photography was a valid medium of artistic expression .
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Alvin Langdon Coburn
(1882 -
1966)

St Paul's
Cathedral from Ludgate Circus, 1905
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Gertrude Kasebier
(1852 - 1934)

Silhouette,
1905
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La
Ruche
Artists’ collective and studio complex founded in Paris in
1902. It was established by Alfred Boucher (1850–1934), a
fireman and sculptor, to help young artists by providing them
with shared models and with an exhibition space open to all
residents. A rotunda from the Pavillon des Vins at the
Exposition Universelle of 1900 was sited at 2, Passage de
Dantzig, on land that Boucher had acquired in 1895 in the
remote district of Vaugirard near Montparnasse. The 12-sided
building originally offered 24 wedge-shaped studios, but a further 140
studios were subsequently built on the site. The first La
Ruche salon opened on 12 February 1905 and took place in many
pavilions built in the garden around the rotunda. The first
painters resident there included Ardengo Soffici and Jean
Raoul Chaurand-Naurac (1878–1948), but Boucher generously went
along with the more avant-garde tendencies of the next
arrivals, such as Léger, Robert Delaunay, Chagall, Soutine,
Henri Laurens, Lipchitz, Zadkine, Archipenko and Michel
Kikoïne (1892–1968). In spite of the wretched conditions in
which they lived, neglecting the building and the garden, it
was these artists of the Ecole de Paris who made La Ruche
famous, along with writers such as Apollinaire, Cendrars and
Max Jacob. _____________
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Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft
German association of architects, urban planners and
writers. Founded in 1902 and active until the 1930s, it was
modelled on the English Garden Cities Association. In contrast
to the English precursor, however, which was grounded on
Ebenezer Howard’s practical theories of economic
decentralization, the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft had
literary roots. Its direct predecessors were the communes
established by literati seeking to re-establish contact with
the land, which flourished in the countryside around Berlin at
the turn of the century. Among its founder-members were the
writers Heinrich Hart (1855–1906) and Julius Hart (1859–1930),
Bruno Wille (1860–1928) and Wilhelm Bölsche (1861–1939), and
the literary tendencies of the group were clearly stated in
the founding manifesto: ‘The Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft
is a propaganda society. It sees the winning over of the
public to the garden city cause as its principal aim’ (quoted
from Founding Statutes of Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft,
article 1, in Hartmann, p. 161). Practical skills were brought
to the group by the cousins Bernhard (b 1867) and Hans
(b 1876) Kampffmeyer, who had both trained as landscape
architects and were active in literary and socialist circles
in both Berlin and Paris.
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Wiener Werkstatte
[Ger.: ‘Viennese workshop’].
Viennese cooperative group of painters, sculptors,
architects and decorative artists founded by Josef Hoffmann
and Kolo Moser in 1903 and active until 1932. The group was modelled upon C. R. Ashbee’s Guild of
Handicraft. Under the artistic direction of Hoffmann and Moser
and with the financial patronage of the industrialist Fritz
Wärndorfer (b 1868), they sought to rescue the applied
arts and artistic craftwork from aesthetic devaluation brought
on by mass production. Their aim was to re-establish the
aesthetic aspect of the everyday object. As a long-term goal
they strove to promote the cultivation of general public taste
by bringing the potential purchaser in close contact with the
designer and craftsworker. The offices, studios and workshops
at Neustiftgasse 32 were designed by Moser with that purpose
in mind.
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Josef Hoffmann
(Austrian Architect and Designer,
1870-1956)

Sitzmaschine Chair with Adjustable
Back
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Koloman
Moser
(Austrian Painter and Designer,
1868-1918)

Poster: "Frommes
Kalender" |
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Union of Russian Artists
[Soyuz Russkikh Khudozhnikov].
Russian exhibiting society, active from 1903 to 1923. It
was set up when the WORLD OF ART group, based in St
Petersburg, amalgamated with the Moscow artists who had
participated in the Exhibitions of the Work of 36 Artists held
in Moscow in December 1901 and 1902. United by their hostility
to old forms and the desire for exhibitions that were not
controlled by juries, the two groups nevertheless embraced
widely divergent aesthetic stances. While former World of Art
artists, such as
Alexandre Benois and
Leon Bakst, attacked the
Wanderers, some Moscow artists, including
Abram Arkhipov and
Konstantin Korovin, continued to exhibit with them. The
Union’s exhibitions were held in Moscow. Inevitably, they were
not stylistically unified: academically lyrical landscapes by Nikolay Klodt (1865–1918) and Arkady Rylov were shown
alongside ‘impressionist’ paintings by
Igor Grabar,
‘symbolist’ canvases by
Viktor Borisov-Musatov, more
experimental works by
Valentin
Serov and
Mikhail Vrubel, as
well as elegantly decorative pictures by
Ivan Bilibin and
Konstantin Somov. After the seventh exhibition in 1910 the
Union split precisely because of such aesthetic differences,
exacerbated by
Benois’s review of the show, which praised the
St Petersburg artists but castigated the majority of works as
‘fussy, tasteless and lifeless’. The Moscow artists remained
within the Union, but the St Petersburg artists seceded and
began to exhibit again under the name World of Art. By 1917
the Union represented outdated artistic concerns: it held its
18th and final exhibition in 1923, after which many former
members, including Rylov,
Arkhipov and Isaak Brodsky, joined AKhRR, the ASSOCIATION OF ARTISTS OF REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA.
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Arkady Rylov
(b Istobenskoye,
Vyatka province, 17 Jan 1870; d Leningrad [now St
Petersburg], 22 June 1933).
Russian painter. After attending the Stieglitz Central School of
Technical Drawing in St Petersburg in 1888–91, he studied at the
Academy of Arts (until 1897). His principal teacher there was
Arkhip Kuindzhi, whose luminarist style greatly influenced Rylov’s
approach to painting and predetermined his concentration on
landscape. Rylov’s early works, such as Green Sound (1904;
Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.), maintain the delicate colour harmonies
of Kuindzhi and also connect with the concurrent work of other
students of Kuindzhi such as Nicholas Roerich. Rylov exhibited
with the World of Art group, although he did not share their
enthusiasm for Art Nouveau and, in closer sympathy with the less
affected style of the Moscow landscape school, he joined the Union
of Russian Artists in 1903. Rylov favoured the Russian forest, the
Black Sea, birds and animals as subject-matter, as in Seagulls
(1910; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), and rarely investigated the
portrait or the still-life.
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In
the blue Expanse
1918
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Sunset
1917
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Blue Rose
[Rus. Golubaya Roza].
Group of second-generation
Russian Symbolist artists active in Moscow between 1904 and
1908. The term derives from the title of an exhibition that
they organized at premises in Myasnitsky Street, Moscow, in
1907. The group originated in Saratov, when in 1904 Pavel
Kuznetsov and Pyotr Utkin (1877–1934) organized the exhibition
Crimson Rose (Rus.
Alaya Roza), which included the work of the two major
Symbolist painters
Mikhail Vrubel and their teacher
Viktor Borisov-Musatov. Later that year, at the Moscow School of
Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, they attracted artists
of a similar persuasion such as Anatoly Arapov (1876–1949), Nikolay Krymov, Nikolay Milioti, Vasily Milioti, Nikolay
Sapunov,
Kuzma
Petrov-Vodkin and Sergey
Sudeykin. An important
member of the group was the wealthy banker, patron and artist Nikolay Ryabushinsky, who publicized Blue Rose in his magazine
GOLDEN FLEECE (Rus.: Zolotoye Runo). By 1907 most of
the group had become co-editors, but a group statement or
manifesto was never published. Ryabushinsky also contributed
to the stability of the group by purchasing works from
Kuznetsov, Sapunov and Sudeykin.
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Nikolai Sapunov
(b Moscow, 17 Dec
1880; d Gulf of Finland, nr Terrioki [St Petersburg
region], 14 June 1912).
Russian painter and stage designer. From 1894 to 1904 he studied
at the School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow
under Konstantin Korovin and Vladimir Serov, and under Isaak
Levitan, who had a formative influence on his early landscape
studies. On a visit to Rome, Florence and Pisa in 1902 Sapunov was
impressed by the painting of Adolphe Monticelli. In 1904 Sapunov
participated in the exhibition of the Crimson Rose (Rus. Alaya
roza) group of Symbolists in Saratov.
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The Maskers
1908
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Dorimena
1910
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The Mystic Gathering
Decor design for "Balaganchik"
1909
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Ball
1910
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Bloomsbury Group
Name applied to a group of friends, mainly writers and
artists, who lived in or near the central London district of
Bloomsbury from 1904 to the late 1930s. They were united by
family ties and marriage rather than by any doctrine or
philosophy, though several male members of the group had been
affected by G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica (Cambridge,
1903) when they had attended the University of Cambridge.
Moore emphasized the value of personal relationships and the
contemplation of beautiful objects, promoting reason above
social morality as an instrument of good within society. This
anti-utilitarian position coloured the group’s early history.
It influenced the thinking of, for example, the biographer and
critic Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) and the economist John
Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) and confirmed the position of
conscientious objection maintained by some members of the
group in World War I. Before 1910, literature and philosophy
dominated Bloomsbury; thereafter it also came to be associated
with painting, the decorative arts and the promotion of
Post-Impressionism in England. This was mainly effected by the
introduction into Bloomsbury of Roger Fry in 1910 and his
close friendship with Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, with
Clive Bell and with the writers Leonard Woolf (1880–1969) and
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941). Fry, helped by the literary editor
Desmond MacCarthy (1877–1952), Clive Bell and the Russian
artist Boris Anrep (1883–1969), was chiefly responsible for
the two large Post-Impressionist exhibitions held in London at
the Grafton Galleries in 1910 and 1912. Bloomsbury’s swift
identification with radical tendencies in the arts was
realized by Vanessa Bell’s Friday Club (founded 1905) and the
Grafton Group exhibiting society (1913–14); by Fry and Clive
Bell’s association with the newly founded Contemporary Art
Society (1910); and by the publication of Bell’s Art
(London, 1914). This pre-eminence as apologists for new
movements in art was soon challenged by Wyndham Lewis, T. E.
Hulme and others, and by c. 1920 Bloomsbury painting
and art criticism can be characterized as increasingly
conservative.
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Friday Club
British group of painters, active 1905–22. Vanessa Bell
conceived of and created the Friday Club in the summer of
1905. She was inspired by her experience of Parisian café life
and the artists introduced to her in Paris by Clive Bell, and
she hoped to create in London a similar milieu in which
artists and friends could meet to exchange ideas. The Club met
for lectures and held regular exhibitions in rented rooms, one
taking place in Clifford’s Inn Hall in 1907, another at the
Baillie Gallery in 1908. Its members were oddly assorted:
Vanessa Bell drew upon students from the Royal Academy Schools
and the Slade School of Fine Art, as well as her own family
and family friends. Lecturers included Clive Bell, Basil
Creighton, Walter Lamb and Roger Fry. Virginia Woolf remarked
that in its early stages the Club was split: ‘one half of the
committee shriek Whistler and French Impressionists, and the
other are stalwart British’. In 1913 Essil Elmslie replaced
Vanessa Bell as secretary to the Club, and meetings and
discussions outside the annual exhibitions ceased. However,
between 1910 and 1914 its exhibitions included young artists
of talent, among them J. D. Innes, Derwent Lees (1885–1931),
John Currie (c. 1890–1914) and Henry Lamb, and drew
much comment from the press. Despite this, the history of the
Club remains shadowy because no minutes of its meetings exist
and not all its exhibition catalogues can be traced.
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Derwent Lees
(1885–1931)

Lyndra in Wales
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