https://www.kunstforumwien.at/en/exhibition/kunstforum/216/love-in-times-of-revolution

Love in Times of Revolution Artist couples of the Russian avant-garde

In autumn 2015 the Kunstforum will focus on the ground-breaking achievements of the Russian avant-garde from a new perspective: the artist couple. Equality of status in production and ways of living for men and women artists in the context of the October Revolution (1917) not only eschews the image of the “solitary artistic genius”, but establishes an interconnection of art and life, public and private. Artist couples like Varvara Stepanova and Alexandr Rodchenko, or Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov connected all genres of artistic creativity to the formation of theories and aesthetic action, formulating through their art the political aspiration for a change in life. Although the artist duo could not always realise their ambitions with the corresponding equality of status, and it remained a theoretical construct, this form of life and creativity nevertheless fostered the crystallisation of a society’s gender ideology. The show investigates what work methods and formations of personal and power relationships were developed by the Russian avant-garde and what special structural features of artistic identity, creativity and production were the results. The Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Schusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow as well as many private lenders are supporting the exhibition with important loans from their collections.

Artist Couples:

Natalia Goncharova & Mikhail Larionov
Varvara Stepanova & Alexandr Rodchenko
Liubov Popova & Alexandr Vesnin
Olga Rosanova & Alexei Kruchenykh
Valentina Kulagina & Gustav Klutsis

Curators: Heike Eipeldauer and Florian Steininger