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My parents took me to see the AGO's show of 'Chagall & the Russian Avant-Garde' tonight. As it turned out, the real reason to see it was Natalia Goncharova, a painter I'd never even heard of until this evening, but whose dynamic compositions and vivid colours were the most eye-catching things on the walls. A quick internet search suggests *no one* outside of Russia had heard of her - until a few years ago when one of her paintings sold for 9.8 million and everyone started to think she was worth a look...
Downstairs there was a related exhibit of early Soviet posters, which were also very striking (that style still screams "avant-garde" ninety-five years later). I could have done with a bit more explanatory material, though one obvious recurring theme was "Hey peasants, you can learn to read now! Go for it!"
I just now confirmed my suspicion that one poster was an ad for the political-satire magazine Krokodil, but it would've been nice to have a label telling visitors that bit of information, so they won't have to wonder why there's a picture of a pink alligator skewering capitalist caricatures with a trident while jovially draping his arm around the shoulder of a worker who is reading a newspaper and laughing.
ETA - the main exhibit also contained one beautiful large cubist painting by Vladimir Baranov-Rossine, again, someone I'd never heard of, and with no biographical info except that he'd died at Auschwitz in 1944 - looking him up, he turns out to have been another fascinating individual, an inventor as well as an artist. C'mon AGO, we need to know these things.
Downstairs there was a related exhibit of early Soviet posters, which were also very striking (that style still screams "avant-garde" ninety-five years later). I could have done with a bit more explanatory material, though one obvious recurring theme was "Hey peasants, you can learn to read now! Go for it!"
I just now confirmed my suspicion that one poster was an ad for the political-satire magazine Krokodil, but it would've been nice to have a label telling visitors that bit of information, so they won't have to wonder why there's a picture of a pink alligator skewering capitalist caricatures with a trident while jovially draping his arm around the shoulder of a worker who is reading a newspaper and laughing.
ETA - the main exhibit also contained one beautiful large cubist painting by Vladimir Baranov-Rossine, again, someone I'd never heard of, and with no biographical info except that he'd died at Auschwitz in 1944 - looking him up, he turns out to have been another fascinating individual, an inventor as well as an artist. C'mon AGO, we need to know these things.
