Report on the Exhibition and Symposium on Ilya Chashnik and the Soviet Geometric Tradition 1910–1930 at Austin, Texas, U.S.A.

Leonardo, Vol. 16, No. I, pp. 31-33, 1983 Printed in Great Britain 0024-094X/83/01003 1-03$03.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd. REPORT ON THE EXHIBITION AND SYMPOSIUM ON ILYA CHASHNIK AND THE SOVIET GEOMETRIC TRADITION 1910-1930 AT AUSTIN, TEXAS, U m S m A m John E. Bowlt* From 16April through 24 May 1981the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery of the University of Texas at Austin and the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at Blue Lagoon, Texas, sponsored the exhibition entitled ‘Ilya Chashnik and the Russian Avant-Garde: Abstraction and Beyond’ at Blue Lagoon. A two-day Symposium on the subject was held at the University. This was the latest in a series of events initiated by the University of Texas and the Institute of Modern Russian Culture to draw attention to 20th-century Russian and Soviet visual art and literature categorized as ‘avant-garde’. The Exhibition contained 73 works by the Suprematist painter, designer and architect Ilya Grigorievich Chashnik (1902-1929) (Figs. 1-3) and his fellow artists Alexandra Exter, Ivan Kliun, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Mikhail Matiushin, Liubow Popova, Alexandre Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova and Nikolai Suetin. The paintings, drawings and applied art are related to the ‘geometric tradition’ considered to have been established between 1910 and 1930 and, more particularly, to the Suprematist style of Malevich, the development of which he began in 1915. The primary purpose of the Exhibition was to focus attention on the biography of Chashnik, still an unfamiliar artist within and outside the Soviet Union and on the artistic innovation identifiable in artworks of artists in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Kharkov and Vitebsk between 1910 and 1930. The organizers of the Exhibition (John E. Bowlt, Matthew Frost, Andrea Norris and Wendy Salmond) explained the need for such an Exhibition by arguing that, in the wake of the recent, synthetic exhibitions of Russian and Soviet innovative artworks, such as ‘The Avant-Garde in Russia 1910-1930: New Perspectives’ at the Los Angeles County Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., it was time to concentrate on specific aspects of the geometric tradition. This is why the ‘Ilya Chashnik and the Russian AvantGarde : Abstraction and Beyond’ exhibition did not include works by Pave1 Filonov [see Leonardo 10,227(1977)land Vasilii Kandinsky, who operated outside the esthetic of the geometric tradition. In their essays in the exhibition catalog, Bowlt and Frost emphasized this particular point, while remembering the wide stylistic diversity of the geometric tradition. Chashnik, it seems to me, was at birth talented to become an innovative visual artist, and he assimilated rapidly the ideas behind the Suprematism of Malevich. At the age of 18, Chashnik was painting sophisticated nonfigurative pictures, compiling theoretical tracts on Suprematist design and playing an important role in the administration of the Vitebsk group known as ‘Unovis’ (an acronym for Affirmation of the New Art); Chashnik also edited the three journals issued by Unovis (Aero, Put’ Unovisa (The Path of Unovis) and Unovis).Furthermore, *Art Historian, Dept. of Slavic Languages, University of Texas, Austin,TX 78712, U.S.A. (Received 29 June 1981.) Chashnik made his innovative artworks in the provincial town of Vitebsk, after only a brief sojourn in Moscow, and without access to large-city dealers, exhibition facilities and subsidies. Chashnik did work in close proximity with Marc Chagall and then later with Malevich and Lissitzky, and assimilated many ideas through the activities of his contemporaries in Vitebsk, such as Vera Ermolaeva, Lazar Khidekel, Nikolai Suetin and Lev Yudin. Even so, I find it astonishing that Chashnik produced in such a short lifeso many works, somany theoretical statements and moved so quickly from painting to architecture and to utilitarian design. The two-day Symposium was chaired by the author of this Note, who is Director of the Institute of Modern Russian Culture. The 12 participants discussed various aspects of the Exhibition, providing a cultural context for it -which is still necessary for a better understanding of the works of Chashnik, Malevich, Popova, Rodchenko, Vladimir Tatlin and others. I opened the Symposium with an examination of the works of Fig. I. Ilya G. Chashnik. ‘MonochromeRelief, wood and paper, 30.5...