The People's Art School and Unovis in Vitebsk (University of Cambridge, 19 & 20 April 2018)

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H-Russia Conference: The People's Art School and Unovis in Vitebsk (University of Cambridge, 19 & 20 April 2018) Discussion published by Isabel Stokholm on Thursday, March 29, 2018 International conference: ‘The People's Art School and Unovis in Vitebsk' Pembroke College, University of Cambridge 19 & 20 April 2018 In the devastating years that followed Russia's 1917 October Revolution, a small provincial town in present-day Belarus witnessed the founding of a revolutionary new art school. At its helm was Marc Chagall, a native of Vitebsk newly returned from Paris, who was soon joined by fellow avangardisti in the form of Kazimir Malevich and El Lissitzky. Together with students and colleagues, and against the backdrop of a raging civil war, this exceptional group of artists elaborated a new path for artistic education and collective creativity that had a profound influence far beyond the boundaries of Vitebsk. Organised by the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre (CCRAC) in collaboration with the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and generously supported by the In Artibus Foundation and Pembroke College, Cambridge, this conference complements the major exhibition, Chagall, Lissitzky, Malevich: Vitebsk 1918-1922, which opens this spring in Paris’s Centre Pompidou (28 March – 23 July 2018). The event draws together fifteen senior academics and emerging scholars from Belarus, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, the US and UK to consider anew this vital period – one that is often lost within the broader history of Russia’s celebrated avant-garde. With papers devoted to a wide range of media, from Russian-Jewish painting to porcelain and Suprematist ballet, this conference aims to reveal just what made a short-lived venture far from Russia’s artistic centres so innovative and far-reaching. For further details and tickets, please visit: www.hoart.cam.ac.uk/research/cracc/the-peoples-art-school-and-unovis-in-vitebsk Citation: Isabel Stokholm. Conference: The People's Art School and Unovis in Vitebsk (University of Cambridge, 19 & 20 April 2018). H- Russia. 03-29-2018. https://networks.h-net.org/node/10000/discussions/1612486/conference-peoples-art-school-and-unovis-vitebsk-university Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1.

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