Experiment I 3KcnepuMeHT 6 (2000), 1-4

ALLA POVELIKHINA

INTRODUCING THE CATALOG AND EXHIBITION "ORGANICA AND THE NON-OBJECTIVE WORLD OF NATURE IN THE RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE"

The idea of organtzing the exhibition "Organica and the Non-Objective World of Nature in the Russian Avant-Garde" was conceived and elaborated at the Galerie Gmurzynska (Cologne) in 1995. The works of the artists now represented at our exhibition provide an opportunity to broaden our under• standing of the variety of movements within the Russian avant -garde. The material in the catalog and the exhibition reflects the conception according to which the exhibition was created. It brings together nine different artists whose works and theoretical writings reflect the community of their philosophical and esthetic ideas, attitudes and ultimately their world-views. The poet and artist Elena Guro ( 1877-1913 ), the musician, artist, composer and scholar Mikhail Matiushin (1861-1934), the artists Boris Ender (1893- 1960), MariiaEnder(1897-1942), KseniaEnder(l894-1955), Pavel Mansurov (1896-1983), PetrMiturich (1887-1956), Vladimir Sterligov (1904-1973) and Pavel Kondratiev (1902-1982) were all contemporaries and-with the exception of Guro, who died prematurely-knew each another well, despite the differences in their ages. The works in the exhibition do not reflect their creative evolution, of course. Emphasis falls on the 191 Os and 1920s or, in the case of Sterligov and Kondratiev, the 1960s and early 1970s. During these years they appeared as "inventors" (to use Khlebnikov's expression) of new artistic forms. As a whole, their creative work may be described as the "Organic" movement within the Russian avant-garde. Herein lies the fund• amental conception of the exhibition. A direct, "living" observation of natural forms characterizes the artists of this movement. Close in their basic views of nature yet unique in their individual feeling and "contemplative vision," they created plastic forms of nature and new but still not exhausted interrelations between forms, color, sound and space within nature, thereby bringing us closer to an understanding of the unity and variety in the universe. The articles and theoretical writings by the artists in the catalog introduce and underscore their views of the world of nature, hence the main theme of the e~hibition: "The Artist and Nature." The article "World Unity and the Organic Movement in the Russian Avant-Garde of the Twentieth Century" outlines the 2 Experiment I 3KcnepHMeHT general conception of the exhibit. The article "On the Russian Avant-Garde" describes the Organic movement of the avant-garde as a phenomenon "belonging" entirely to the North {particularly to the northern capital of St. Petersburg). The catalog also includes an article on "Organic Culture and the Symbolist Heritage" which notes the community and continuity of ideas and problems (especially of Guro, Matiushin and his school) with the "rich tradition of the organic question in Russian culture" and with the heritage of Symbolism. There had to be a community of ideas, research and spiritual orientation among Symbolist artists and avant-garde artists of the Organic movement, of course, particularly during the 1900s, when they worked together simultaneously. In their early works, moreover, one can sense the influence of the Art Nouveau style. Yet there is a distinction of principle between them. Artists ofthe Organic movement made contact with nature on a different level, one which can be felt above all in their artistic language, in the new plasticity of their forms, in their means of organizing space. The non-objectivity which arose on the pictorial surface in the works of this movement resulted from their penetration into the life of form-color-medium, which lay deep and concealed from the simple eye. A deformation of objects occurs when their forms interact with one another in a luminous colored space. The works ofMatiushin, the Enders and Sterligov embody the interference and diffraction of color, as well as the colored "'linking" of an object to its environment when light passes, a natural phenomenon observable in a rainbow, crystal, etc. Their works carry delicate nuances of color, half-tones, light, purity, sonority, radiance and a feeling for nature. "Color," Miturich said, is "a wave of light in the hands of an artist." · Landscape-whether terrestrial or cosmic-occupies a central place in their work. Works by artists of the Organic movement are built on an organically curvilinear geometry characteristic of nature. Theirs is a new, living fractal geometry of nature whose additional element is curved geometry. On their pictorial surface arises a new Reality which has begun to discover its harmony. According to Matiushin' s definition, theirs is an "objective/non-objective truth" or "non-objective spatial realism." As Sterligov said, the object is an "ancient lady," and be it wood, stone or something else, it loses the image which has been established for it. This provided the grounds for naming the exhibition "The Non-Objective World ofNature." 1 A statement by artist Tatiana Glebova is interesting in this connection. Glebova was first a student of Pavel Filonov before she discovered her path in the pictorial system of Sterligov. In a written response to a philosopher of the Oberiu group Yakov Druskin (1902-80), Glebova wrote: "A non-objective painting may depict an object-non~ ·

1. Art historian Elena Rakitina proposed the more precise title ofthe exhibition.