CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/10/2017

How the Russians Revolutionized Art: From Rodchenko and Malevich to Kitchenware and Kerchiefs

What a moment for a book about the art, photography, film, poster art and product design produced in Russia between Lenin's October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and Stalin's 1932 decree that all art should express Soviet ideology. Yes, this book includes the films of Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, the architectural plans and projects of El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko's Constructivist photographs and abstract paintings by Malevich and Kandinsky. But it also contains a figurative painting of a women shot-putter, kitchenware with Suprematist compositions, food coupons, a kerchief commemorating the Second Congress of the Trekhgornaya Textile Workers, and porcelain figurines of women doing heroic commonplace things like embroidering a banner, making a speech and standing guard on a Women's Watch. Featured on this spread is a detail of Isaak Brodsky's 1919 oil painting, "Vladimir Lenin and a Demonstration," from the collection of the State Historical Museum, Moscow.