Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 at Royal Academy of Arts

The Royal Academy of Arts in London presents 'Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932', a major exhibition featuring over 200 works by artists, designers, photographers, and filmmakers from the Russian avant-garde. The show is inspired by a 1932 exhibition at the State Russian Museum in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), curated by Nikolay Punin, which both celebrated the avant-garde and marked its symbolic end, as Stalin soon enforced socialist realism as the only approved style. Works range from Kazimir Malevich's suprematist ceramics to Isaak Brodsky's portraits of Lenin, and include pieces by Vassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Vladimir Tatlin, and Alexander Deineka. The exhibition explores the fusion of revolutionary ideology with traditional and avant-garde aesthetics, covering themes such as industrialization, the role of women workers, and the utopian projects of the era, including Tatlin's 'Letatlin' flying machine. A black cube installation presents mugshots of victims of Stalin's purges, highlighting the tragedy behind the revolutionary optimism. The exhibition runs until April 17, 2017.