EXHIBITION: Last week of Kandinsky's 'Painting with White Border' at Guggenheim NYC

October 21, 2011–January 15, 2012
Vasily Kandinsky’s canvas, Painting with White Border (Bild mit weissem Rand, May 1913) was inspired by a trip the artist took to Moscow in fall 1912. Upon his return to Munich, where he had been living intermittently since 1896, Kandinsky searched for a way to visually record the “extremely powerful impressions” of his native Russia that lingered in his memory. Over a period of five months, he explored various motifs and compositions in study after study, moving freely between pencil, pen and ink, watercolor, and oil. After he produced at least 16 studies, Kandinsky finally arrived at the pictorial solution to the painting: the white border. In his seminal 1911 treatise Über das Geistige in der Kunst. Insbesondere in der Malerei (On the Spiritual in Art: And Painting in Particular), Kandinsky wrote that the color white expresses a “harmony of silence . . . pregnant with possibilities.” 

Vasily Kandinsky, Painting with White Border (Bild mit weissem Rand), May 1913 (detail). Oil on canvas, 140.3 x 200.3 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By gift 37.245 © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris


This focused exhibition, co-organized with the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., brings the Guggenheim’s final version of the painting from May 1913 together with twelve related drawings and watercolors and one major oil sketch, and features the results of an extensive conservation study of the Guggenheim and Phillips paintings. The study unearthed a previously unknown landscape painting beneath the surface of the Phillips’s Sketch I forPainting with White Border (Moscow) (Skizze für Bild mit weissem Rand [Moskau], 1913). A rare glimpse into Kandinsky’s creative process, Kandinsky’s Painting with White Border reveals the gradual and deliberate way the artist sought to translate his ideas into a bold new language of abstraction. 


Kandinsky’s work is a cornerstone of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s collection. The museum’s founder, industrialist Solomon R. Guggenheim, began acquiring Kandinsky’s paintings—including Painting with White Border—as early as 1929, and today the Guggenheim’s holdings of his work are among the most extensive in the world.
This exhibition is supported by a grant from the Joseph and Sylvia Slifka Foundation.
—Tracey Bashkoff, Curator, Collections and Exhibitions
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/kandinskys-painting-with-white-border

Russian Avant-gardes in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collections

Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Special display of the Russian avant-garde works from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza’s Permanent Collection and from the Carmen Thyssen Collection
Location: Rooms 42 and 43, ground floor

The Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza has the most important collection of Soviet avant-garde art in Spain. Coinciding with the Contemporary Art Fair ARCO 2011 (Madrid, 16 to 20 February) with Russia as Invited Country, the Museum will be showing a new installation of its holdings of the so-called “Russian avant-gardes” in Rooms 42 and 43 on the ground floor of the Palacio de Villahermosa.


In the early decades of the 20th century a unique and unprecedented cultural renaissance took place in Imperial Russia (soon to become the Soviet Union). The Russian art world sprang to life with programmatic exhibitions, passionate manifestoes and theoretical declarations, accompanied by the rise of numerous different avant-garde movements. Some were based on outside influence, such as Cubo-Futurism and Rayonism, while others were authentic creations of the new, revolutionary Russia, such as Suprematism and Constructivism.


Visitors to the Museum will have the opportunity to learn about all these movements through a group of 35 works by artists of the stature of Chagall, Larionov, Goncharova, Stepanova, Popova, Kliun, Lissitzky and Kandinsky.

Russian Avant-gardes in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collections
From 15 February to 31 December 2011

http://www.museothyssen.org/pdf/exposiciones/vanguardias-rusas.pdf
http://www.museothyssen.org/en/thyssen/exposiciones_actuales

SCRSS Lecture: Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde Art 1900-1935

Illustrated Lecture: Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde Art 1900-1935 by Christine Lindey
Friday 2 December 7pm

Early 20th-century artists such as Goncharova, Kandinsky and Malevich created modernist art that challenged late Tsarism's aesthetic, political and social norms. In the Bolshevik era artists such as Tatlin, Popova and Rodchenko put avant-garde art at the service of the Revolution by applying modernist aesthetics to the production of textile designs, ceramics, posters and illustrations for the benefit of the working class. This illustrated lecture will explore the social, political and aesthetic debates that underlay this vibrant period in Russian and Soviet art and design. 


The Society for Co-operation in Russian and Soviet Studies (SCRSS) is a unique educational centre, based in London, which aims to promote knowledge of the culture, language and history of Russia and the former Soviet Union.
The Society caters for students, teachers, researchers, designers and all other individuals interested in Russia. It offers a library, archive and unique photographic collection. It also organises lectures, film shows and exhibitions, and facilitates professional contacts between individuals and organisations in Russia and the United Kingdom. The Society is a registered charity.

http://www.scrss.org.uk/cinemaevents.htm#avantgarde

EXHIBITION: Chagall and the Russian Avant-Garde

The Art Gallery of Ontario is bringing the magic, whimsy and wonder of Marc Chagall to Toronto with a major exhibition organized by the Centre Pompidou. Chagall and the Russian Avant-Garde: Masterpieces from the Collection of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, features the lush, colourful, and dreamlike art of Marc Chagall alongside the visionaries of Russian modernism, including Wassily Kandinsky, Kasimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova, Sonia Delaunay, and Vladimir Tatlin.

The exhibition examines how Chagall’s Russian heritage influenced and informed his artistic practice, illustrating how he at turns embraced and rejected broader movements in art history as he developed his widely beloved style.


Chagall and the Russian Avant-Garde comprises 118 works from a broad array of media, including painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, and film. The artwork is drawn entirely from the collection of the Centre Pompidou and features 32 works by Chagall and eight works by Kandinsky.

Marc Chagall The Blue Circus (1950)

Marc Chagall à Paris (French language workshop)
Durant la période d’entre-deux-guerres, Marc Chagall s’installe à Paris et travaille pour Ambroise Vollard, le grand marchant d’art. Les participants exploreront l’influence du surréalisme et du classicisme français sur l’artiste, mais aussi ses sources d’inspirations : le cirque, la Bible hébraïque et la poésie.
8 and 9 December, 10am - 1pm
Members $100 | Public $165
Additional materials fees may apply.  Please note: this workshop will be taught in French.

http://www.ago.net/chagall-and-the-russian-avant-garde

Tate Modern: Blue Rider Centenary Symposium

The conference programme for the Tate Modern symposium celebrating the Centenary of the Blue Rider has now been published.

The Blue Rider Centenary Symposium
Friday 25 November 2011, 10.30–17.30
Saturday 26 November 2011, 10.30–17.00

This symposium celebrates the centenary of the first exhibition of The Blue Rider at Galerie Thannhauser in Munich in December 1911. The Blue Rider was a global project including references as diverse as Japanese art, Russian folk art, children's drawings, Bavarian glass painting and artworks by contemporary European artists, musicians and writers.

Wassily Kandinsky 

Cossacks 1910–11 

Tate © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2002

The two-day event will establish the divergent as well as related patterns of intention, outcome and influence presented under the name Der Blaue Reiter and explore its ongoing legacies and relevance today. Keynote presentations by Annegret Hoberg and Peter Vergo. Keynote performance by Stelarc. A performance of Kandinsky's Der Gelbe Klang (Yellow Sound) will take place on Saturday evening.

In collaboration with University of Bristol and Centre for Fine Art Research Cardiff (CSAD)
Supported by the British Academy and the Bristol Gallery

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£30 (£20 concessions), booking required. For tickets book online or call 020 7887 8888.
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/24491.htm
Programme 
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/blue_rider_programme.pdf