AVANT-GARDE RECEPTIONS IN SOVIET MASS TEXTILES OF THE 1930S

Abstract

The article describes how the basic principles and approaches of the avant-­garde synthetic thought were applied and reinterpreted in the art of mass production textiles in the 1930s. The situation in textile industries in the first revolutionary years is briefly outlined, as well as the reasons that forced both avant-­gardists and government representatives to pay attention to the issue of systematic education of textile artists. This article examines how the textile faculty of Vkhutemas-­Vkhutein became the place of formation of a new type of artist, who fully manifested himself after graduating from the institute in the 1930s. Being authors who possess equally artistic skills, project thinking, knowledge of technical and chemical factors, and capable to solve problems of various nature, they were able to demonstrate the reliability of the program proposed by the pedagogues of the main avant-­garde school for the textile art industry. Despite the obvious difference between the drawings for fabrics of the avant-­garde period and the subsequent decade, the continuity of the educational approach is common, which demonstrated itself at the moment of the turning point of aesthetic and ideological ideas. Lia Raitzer, Vera Lotonina, Daria Preobrazhenia, Maria Anufrieva, Dina Lekhtman-­Zaslavskaya, Maria Shuikina and other students of the formal method showed how knowledge of propaedeutics and synthetic interdisciplinary thinking helped them to adapt to the new aesthetic, ideological and industrial aspects and at the same time contain their signature handwriting.