Russia might be “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”, as Churchill put it, but the exhilarating creative power of Russian art from the 1870s through to the 1917 Revolution is one hell of a ride!
Join our Art History Mornings at The Beecroft for a whirlwind tour this summer!
Image: Isaac Levitan: The Lake (1900)
Saturday 29th July, 10.30 – 12.30pm
From The Wanderers’ awe-inspiring landscapes to the realist genre paintings of Ilya Repin, we’ll explore the 19th-century art of a nation seeing itself for the first time. It’s a picture that Kandinsky will later turn into abstract art, and Diaghilev will translate into the Ballet Russes.
Image: Kazimir Malevich: Suprematist Composition (1916)
Saturday 26th August, 10.30-12.30pm
In the first decade of the 20th century, Russian artists tear up all the rulebooks: Natalya Goncharova leads a Futurist avant-garde; Malevich paints Black Square and announces an entire new art, and come 1917, Tatlin is designing a rotating tower that reaches up into the clouds.
Meetings are held on Saturday mornings, 10.30am to 12.30pm in the Lecture Theatre on the ground floor of the Beecroft Gallery.
Each talk costs £10 and includes tea/coffee (biscuits!) and resource materials for independent research.
For further information and to enrol, please contact Mark Banting:
Email: chasingtales@rocketmail.com
@TheCommonViewer
These monthly Saturday morning art history talks are educational yet informal and open to anyone with an interest in art. Each session combines an illustrated talk and discussion, drawing on collections and current exhibitions around the UK.