Amazons of the Avant-Garde (Guggenheim Museum Publications) [Hardcover]

Alexandra Exter (Author), Liubov' Sergeevna Popova (Author), John E. Bowlt (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Guggenheim Museum Publications | Publication Date: June 2000

Some of the most outstanding exhibitions organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum have been those that have presented the art of the Russian avant-garde. In Amazons of the Avant-Garde: Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, and Nadezhda Udaltsova the work o six legendary Russian women artists is poignantly explored, offering a refreshing look at this important period of art. Celebrating the vital role that each artist played in the formation of the radical art of the Russian avant-garde, the book looks at the evolution of the Russian painting from the 1900's through the early 1920's. It brings together the brilliant masterpieces of the period, including many that have not been in the West since they were created. The work of these pioneering women artists is expressed as tremendously influential in the world of the Russian avant-garde and important in capturing the Modernist as a whole.

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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This catalog accompanies an upcoming traveling exhibition, originating at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, that will feature six women painters of the early 20th-century Russian avant-garde: Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, and Nadezhda Udaltsova. Organized by the curators of the exhibition, the catalog discusses these women, their painting, and their work in other art forms, including theater, textile design, and writing. The book features biographies of each woman in addition to essays that focus on the issue of gender in the arts of turn-of-the-century Russia. What results is a well-documented, well-illustrated book with color plates that includes a chronology of each artist and a collection of translated primary documents (artists! correspondence, extracts from diaries, and contemporary exhibition catalogs). A valuable resource for the study of women artists and the avant-garde in Russia; highly recommended for academic libraries and specialized art collections."Eric Linderman, Ida Rupp P.L., Port Clinton, OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

No serious overviews of modern art neglect the Russian avant-garde, but the group's women artists are rarely accorded in-depth study. To redress this imbalance, the Guggenheim Museum fashioned a traveling exhibition about six "Amazons" of the movement: Alexandra Exter, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, and Nadezhda Udaltsova, an important undertaking handsomely documented by Russian art expert Bowlt, Guggenheim curator Drutt, and their contributors. Their volume's reproductions, many never before published in the West, make it invaluable, but the essays, both biographical and topical (analyzing, for instance, the status of women artists in Russia), establish a vivid cultural context, while writings by the artists bring their voices into the mix. The synergy among the six is palpable, but each took a distinctive approach to bridging the divide between the figurative and the abstract. Gifted, sophisticated, and, as Charlotte Douglas writes, "vital and direct, hardworking, competitive, and uncompromising," the artists also spanned the shift from imperial Russia to the Soviet state, an upheaval mirrored in their energetic and searching creations. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 364 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (June 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810969246
• ISBN-13: 978-0810969247
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,343,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)