Soviet Nonconformist Art Soviet Nonconformist Art Soviet Underground

Soviet Nonconformist Art

Soviet Nonconformist Art / Soviet Underground Art / Soviet Unofficial Art. Place: Soviet Union Period (approximately): 1953 -1986 (Stalin’s death – Perestroika) Key events: Stalin’s death, Manège Exposition, Action Exposition, Bulldozer Exhibition. Artists' Groups: Lianozovo, Sretensky Boulevard, Collective Actions, Sots Art, Gnezdo, Petersburg group, Odessa Group, etc. Social influence: cultural democratization Stalin and The Muses, Komar and Melamid 1981 -1982

Manège Exposition ● Novaya Realnost Avant-Garde Studio vs. Nikita Kchruschev ● December 1, 1962 ●Moscow Manege “What kind of faces are these? Can you paint at all? My grandchild paints better than you! … What the hell is this? Why, are you men or damned paederasts? How dare you paint this! Shame on you!” “Too general and unclear. Listen, Bielutin, I’ll tell you as the Council of Ministers chairman: soviet people do not need it. Got it? It’s me who tells you this! … Ban it! Ban it all! Stop this disgrace! I order it! I tell you! See to it! And all the media followers of this must be rooted out!” N. Kchruschev, indignant at the exposition

Ülo Ilmar Sooster, Abstraction 1962

Vladimir Yankilevsky, Pentaptych No. 1: Atomic Station 1962

Action Exposition ● August 25, 1974 ● Moscow ● The street action genre ● Aleksandr Popov

Bulldozer Exhibition ● September 15, 1974 ● 20 soviet artists ● Moscow Bitsevski Park ● police + bulldozers The turning point in the history of Nonconformist Art “We ought to shoot you but it’s a waste of cartridge”. Anonymous policeman about the Nonconformist artists.

“The exhibition was more of a political challenge to the repressive regime than of an artistic event. I knew that we would have problems, that there would be detentions, beating. We were all in fear during the two days before the opening. I was scared by the thought that absolutely anything could happen with me”. Oscar Rabine, an artist and one of the Bulldozer Exhibition curators

Oscar Rabine, Roses on the Preobrazhensky Val 1966

Lidia Masterkova, Composition

Some other examples of Soviet Nonconformist Art

K&M, The Birth of Socialist Realism. From Nostalgic Socialist Realism series. (on the left) K&M, A Knock at the Door. From Nostalgic Socialist Realism series. (on the right)

Oscar Rabine, Baths (Sniff Eau de Cologne Moscow) (on the left) Oscar Rabine, Violin at the Cemetary (on the right)

Ülo Ilmar Sooster, The Red Egg (on the left) Alexander Kosolapov, Molotov Cocktail (on the right)

The End Alina Strelkovskaia European Humanities University (Vilnius) BA Theory and Practice of Contemporary Art