AKhRR
A Russian artists' association founded in Moscow in 1922. Its first group show, held in that year, was entitled ‘Exhibition of Pictures by Artists of the Realist Direction in Aid of the Starving’, but it then adopted the name Assotsiatsiya Khudozhnikov Revolyutsionnoi Rossii (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia), which was abbreviated to AKhRR. The primary aim of its members was to present revolutionary Russia in a realistic, documentary manner by depicting the everyday life of the proletariat, the peasantry, the Red Army, and so on; in their desire for authenticity many members visited such places as factories, railway depots, and shipyards. They were fervently opposed to Futurism and other modernist trends, and stylistically were much indebted to the academic realism that had characterized much 19th-century Russian painting. Many of the older members had indeed been brought up in this tradition, notably Abram Arkhipov (1862–1930), Nikolai Kasatkin (1859–1930), and Konstantin Yuon (1875–1958). Artists of a younger generation included Isaak Brodsky (1884–1939), Alexander Gerasimov, and Boris Ioganson (1893–1973). By the mid-1920s AKhRR was the most influential body of artists in Russia, having affiliations throughout the country, its own publishing house, and direct government support. In 1928 its name was changed to Assotsiatsiya Khudozhnikov Revolyutsii (Association of Artists of the Revolution), abbreviated to AKhR, and in 1929 it established its own journal, Iskusstvo v massy (Art for the Masses). In 1932, together with all other art and literary groups, AKhR was dissolved by Stalin.
Top
The Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (Russian: Ассоциация художников революционной России, Assotsiatsia Khudozhnikov Revolutsionnoi Rossii, 1922-1928), later known as Association of Artists of the Revolution (Ассоциация художников революции, Assotsiatsia Khudozhnikov Revolutsii or AKhR, 1928-1932) was a group of artists in the Soviet Union in 1928-1933. Diverse members of the group gained favor as the legitimate bearers of the Communist ideal into the world of art, formulating framework for the Socialist Realism style.
Original founding members included Pavel Radimov (the last chairman of Peredvizhniki movement), Sergey Malyutin, Yevgeny Katzman, Pyotr Shukhmin and other realist painters, who already established themselves in artistic world before the Russian Revolution of 1917. The group formed within the Peredvizhniki movement, that held their last, 47th, public exhibition in 1922, and clearly placed itself in opposition to avant-garde art.
Their first public statement as a new entity was a 1922 exhibition in Moscow; all proceeds were used for the relief of Russian famine of 1921. By 1928, the group sponsored 10 nation-wide exhibitions with high publicity. Despite its revolutionary title, it successfully united artists of the "old school" like Abram Arkhipov, Aleksandr Makovsky, Nikolay Kasatkin, Konstantin Yuon and the younger ones like Sergei Gerasimov and Isaak Brodsky. In a decade, it grew up from 80 to over 300 members. Broad membership and dominance of mature artists born in 1870s and 1880s helped in establishing AKhRR as a reliable institution, far from ultra-revolutionary rhetorics.
During the crackdown on independent art movements in 1932-1933, AKhRR served as the nucleus for the stalinist USSR Union of Artists, and was liquidated after its formation.
See also
Other groups in Soviet art of 1920s:
- Four Arts movement (Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Martiros Saryan etc.)
- OST (Alexander Deyneka)
References
- Valentina Knyazeva (1967) (in Russian). AKhRR. Leningrad: "Khudozhnik RSFSR". OCLC 10728448.
- I. M. Gronskiy; V. N. Perelman (1973) (in Russian). AKhRR: sbornik vospominaniy, statey, dokumentov. Moscow: Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo. OCLC 11387476.
- Ekaterina Dyogot (2000) (in Russian). Russkoe iskusstvo XX veka. Moscow: Trilistnik. ISBN 5-89480-031-5.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Post a question - any question - to the WikiAnswers community:
Copyrights:
Oxford Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art
A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art. © 1998
Oxford University Press.
All rights reserved.
Read more
Mentioned in
» More