For the first time in Athens, a comprehensive selection of works (paintings, drawings, three-dimensional artefacts) from the Thessaloniki-based State Museum of Contemporary Art's Costakis Collection is presented at the Museum of Cycladic Art. The Collection includes masterpieces of the Russian avant-garde (1900s-1930s) by artists such as Malevich, Popova, Tatlin, Rodchenko, Nikritin, Lissitzky etc.
Divided into five chapters, the exhibition is devoted to the bold pioneering aesthetic experiments that took place in Russia and that, through their dynamism and boldness, transformed the history of 20th-century art. Chapter 1: The Years Before includes works influenced by symbolism, expressionism and post-impressionism; these paved the way for the vanguard that was to follow. Chapter 2: The Years of Travel presents the relationship of Russian artists with European art in the first two decades of the 20th century, the influence of cubism and futurism, the search for novelty through a fresh approach to tradition, the abolition of linear development, and the synthesis of the arts. Chapter 3: The Years of Mysticism is devoted to philosophical theories of art, with emphasis on the suprematism of Kazimir Malevich; these arise from theosophist approaches and explore ways of expanding perception with the aid of the visual image. Chapter 4: The Years of Ideology contains works related to the ideology of the October Revolution, asserting a materialist approach to art, integrated into the dream of changing the world, and seeking to provide structural and functional ideas and solutions for architects, draughtsmen and engineers. Chapter 5: The Years After is devoted to works by artists who refused to subscribe to the aesthetic of socialist realism, but continued along a difficult, lonely path, returning to representational art and recording the conclusions of their pioneering experiments in a distinctive fashion. The exhibition is used as a prototype for the exhibition Vers de Nouveaux Rivages – works form the Costakis Collection of the State Museum of Modern Art, to be held at the Maillol Museum in Paris in November 2008. The exhibition is accompanied by a colour, bilingual catalogue (Greek and English), designed by Designers United (see images below). The catalogue of the exhibition
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Museum of Cycladic Art
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