APTART's Anti-Shows: Unofficial Art in Late Soviet Moscow
David Morris's essay 'Anti-Shows', published by Afterall in 2017, examines APTART, a collective of unofficial artists in Moscow active from 1982 to 1984. APTART organized 'anti-shows'—exhibitions in private apartments and outdoor spaces—as a circumvention of the state-controlled official art system dominated by Socialist Realism. The group included Nikita Alekseev, Natalia Abalakova, Anatoly Zhigalov, Sven Gundlakh, Victor Skersis, Vadim Zakharov, Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Yuri Albert, and others. Their works blurred art and life, using domestic objects and spaces. The KGB raided Alekseev's apartment in February 1983, confiscating works, but APTART continued until 1984, just before perestroika. Morris situates APTART within a broader history of apartment exhibitions in the Soviet Bloc, tracing connections to earlier groups like Collective Actions and later initiatives like APTART International. He argues that these micro-experiments in collective self-organization hold lessons for contemporary art, especially in resisting market and institutional pressures.
Key facts
- APTART was active in Moscow from 1982 to 1984.
- The group organized 'anti-shows' in apartments and outdoors.
- Nikita Alekseev's apartment was the primary venue.
- KGB raided the apartment on 15 February 1983.
- APTART included artists like Abalakova, Zhigalov, Gundlakh, Skersis, Zakharov, Zvezdochetov, and Albert.
- The term 'APTART' is a contraction of 'apartment art' and a play on the Russian word for 'art'.
- APTART was part of a larger network of unofficial art in the Soviet Union.
- The essay was published by Afterall in 2017.
Entities
Artists
- David Morris
- Manuel Alcayde
- Nikita Alekseev
- Natalia Abalakova
- Anatoly Zhigalov
- Sven Gundlakh
- Victor Skersis
- Vadim Zakharov
- Konstantin Zvezdochetov
- Yuri Albert
- Ilya Kabakov
- Erik Bulatov
- Ivan Chuikov
- Boris Groys
- Vitaly Komar
- Alexander Melamid
- Andrei Monastyrsky
- Lev Rubinshtein
- George Kiesewalter
- Mikhail Roshal
- Gennady Donskoi
- Joseph Bakshtein
- Gia Abramishvili
- Irina Nakhova
- Haralampi Oroschakoff
- Octavian Trauttmansdorff
- Franz West
- Heimo Zobernig
- IRWIN
- Raúl Avellaneda
- Helmut Psotta
- Sergio Zevallos
- Margarita Tupitsyn
- Victor Tupitsyn
- Joseph Stalin
- Maxim Gorky
- Alfred Barr
- Gertrude Stein
- Georg Lukács
- Jackson Pollock
- Willem de Kooning
- Mark Rothko
- Julian Schnabel
- Roman Abramovich
- Dasha Zhukova
- Walter Benjamin
Institutions
- Afterall
- State Tretiakov Gallery
- Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
- Museum of Modern Art
- Central Intelligence Agency
- Muzeum Sztuki Łódź
- ABC No Rio
- Grupo Puré
- Grupo Provisional
- Grupo Arte Calle
- Grupo Chaclacayo
- Moscow Archive of New Art (MANI)
- Collective Actions group
- Mukhomors
- TOTART
- SZ
- Pertsy
- Gnezdo
- APTART International
- NSK State
Locations
- Moscow
- Russia
- USSR
- Havana
- Cuba
- New York
- United States
- Paris
- France
- Ljubljana
- Slovenia
- Berlin
- Germany
- Lima
- Peru
- Odessa
- Ukraine
- Łódź
- Poland
- Gorky Park
- East Village
- Manhattan
- Sandunovsky bathhouse
- 12 Leninsky Prospect