Expressionist Networks in the Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and the Soviet Union

Abstract

This chapter looks at Russian-German expressionist relations from the pre-revolutionary period up to the early days of the Soviet Union. In the early years of the twentieth century, Russian artists, in their pursuit of new yet authentically Russian modernist art forms, looked to a wide range of artistic influences. In the summer of 1921, the Hungarian art critic Alfred Kemeny, who was living in exile in Berlin, traveled to Moscow in order to participate in the Third Congress of the Communist International. In the field of literature, expressionism began to attract the attention of Russian poets, critics, and scholars only after the October Revolution. As a result of the revolutions in Russia and then Germany, Berlin became home to a large Russian emigre community and a lively center of cultural exchange. After years of isolation, Russian artists—the younger generation in particular—were eager to communicate with colleagues in the West and to make their way into the international art scene.