Editor's Statement: The Russian Avant-Garde

Abstract

The sociopolitical gap that has divided Soviet Russia and the West during most of this century has inspired much mutual curiosity about artistic—among many other—activities. Owing to greater freedom and flow of information, we in the West have been better able to indulge this curiosity. It is significant that this curiosity seems destined to be continually whetted by exhibitions and publications, but never sated! In particular, the more information we gain about the period of Russian Avant-Garde art (circa 1910–circa 1930)—officially ignored in the Soviet Union since the declaration of Social Realism in the early 1930s—the more we desire to learn about it and to evaluate it in terms of the development of twentieth-century art. This issue of the Art Journal is one of many current manifestations of such interest.