The Hermitage Museum has announced plans to open a contemporary art outpost in Moscow, hinting at an attempt by the Russian city to become a contemporary art powerhouse.  “Rather than being perceived as a museum dealing only with the past, the Hermitage is pushing itself forward into the future from its powerful historical position,” says commissioned architect Hani Rashid of Asymptote Architecture said. “Our whole generation of architects looked to the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century, which made such a powerful break to the past. We’re working within a tradition that we’re extending.” (more…)

Dasha Zhukova’s long-awaited Garage Center for Contemporary Art has opened in Moscow’s Gorky Park, designed by architect Rem Koolhaas from a repurposed Soviet-era dining canteen.  “We are very happy to work on turning the almost-ruin of vremena goda into the new house for garage,’ says Koolhaas. “We were able, with our client and her team, to explore the qualities of generosity, dimension, openness, and transparency of the soviet wreckage and find new uses and interpretations for them.” (more…)

Al Jazeera looks at the massive Savitsky collection in Uzbekistan, where tens of thousands of Russian avant-garde masterpieces were salvaged and put on display by artist and founder Igor Savitsy following their censorship in their home country, including long forgotten works by Kandinsky, Chagall, and more.  “Without him, they would have been gone without a trace,” says Marinika Babanazarova, the current director of the Nukus Art Museum where his collection lies.  “These days, he is an authority figure, genius, but at the time they saw him as a weirdo, an absolute nutcase.” (more…)

With Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Center for Contemporary Art set to open on June 12th in Moscow, the museum has released a video offering a preview of both its impressive architecture and its world-class collection, including a colorful mural unearthed during renovations of the site, previously a Soviet-era restaurant.   (more…)

The Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow was investigated yesterday after a man with fake provenance was detained attempting to leave the country with a set of works valued at almost $50,000.  Initial reports speculate that Russian security may have discovered a plot in which wealthy collectors abroad are paying to smuggle the works with forged documents.  “The investigators have already left, and while the investigation is ongoing we will not comment further,” a representative of the gallery told The Guardian. (more…)

Irina Lebedeva, the head of Moscow’s State Tretyakoff Gallery, has been dismissed by the government following criticisms over her leadership on expansion projects and a number of other various complaints.  “The construction of the second wing has dragged out, there are scandals around the museum, which has yet to create comfortable surroundings for visitors, schoolchildren, students, and facilitators,” says Mikhail Bryzgalov in a statement. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal profiles the ongoing collaboration between Rem Koolhaas and Dasha Zhukova to create the new home for Zhukova’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow’s Gorky Park.  “The building is basically a found object,” Koolhaas says. “We are embracing it as it is.” (more…)

Russian entrepreneur, mathematician, engineer and collector, Inna Bazhenova has purchased the Art Newspaper, with the intent of helping in the development of the site’s online offering.  “The quality of its journalism and scholarship are outstanding and its excellent coverage of international art news is vital in our global environment,” she said in a statement. “I want to reassure you that The Art Newspaper will retain complete editorial independence, now and for as long as I own it. My aim is to invest in it so that it may remain as good as it is today.” (more…)

Maria Bukhtoyarova is the subject of a profile in the Wall Street Journal this week, as the young collector (just over 30), reviews her already impressive collection of works.  “I got interested in art in the late 2000s when I was working for L’Officiel magazine in Moscow,” she writes.  “In 2009, I went to Venice to visit the Biennale. It was an experience that brought me into the art world. I was fascinated by all the art around me and its power.” (more…)

Wassily Kandinsky, Group with Crinolines (1909), via Art Observed

On view at the Guggenheim New York is an exhibition of early works by the pioneering Russian modernist Wassily Kandinsky, made between the years of 1901 and 1911, during the time he and his partner Gabriele Münter traveled extensively throughout Europe, Tunisia, and Russia.  The works, featuring a blend of Kandinsky’s developing lyrical style and his more early, studied figurative pieces and landscapes offer a strong look at an oft-overlooked part of the artist’s career.

(more…)

Manifesto 10, Installation View, all photos courtesy of Manifesto 10

Despite a steady stream of critiques, criticism and outright protest over the current political climate in Russia, Manifesta 10, one of Europe’s leading contemporary art biennials, has pressed on.  The exhibition, which opened late last month, has made much of its presence in Russia, presenting an exhibition that addresses its own political background while using it as a spring board to broader issues. (more…)

Former Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova have announced that they will be suing the Russian government on the grounds that their prosecution violated international standards for civil rights.  The lawsuit will look for €120,000 each in compensation, as well as €10,000 to cover court fees. (more…)

Kazimir Malevich, Self Portrait (1908-1910), State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia

In 1915, Kazimir Malevich first exhibited his Black Square, a simple, powerful statement on the possibilities for painting in the face of contemporaries still bound up in the exploration of figurative painting and impressionist tropes.  The piece marked a bounding leap forward for modernist practice, or rather, a point of entry in its own right to the early concepts of abstraction.

Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Painting (with Black Trapezium and Red Square) (1915), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (more…)

Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, The Four Paintings about Sun, via Thaddeus Ropac

Now through July 12, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac is presenting Paintings about the Sun, new work by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. The exhibition will take place in Salzburg at the gallery’s Villa Kast location. The works on view represent a departure from many of the artist’s previous installed and illustrated investigations, with the conversational capacity of an image being tested while form and frame are disrupted then elaborated. The sun is a consistent presence throughout the work, represented as either a blinding impediment to vision or impossibly illuminating.

(more…)

The British Council has confirmed reports from earlier this month that a YBA show planned for Moscow has been cancelled.  The show had suffered from lack of funding, following the withdrawal of potential sponsorship funds from Russian patrons Vladimir and Ekaterina Semenikhin of the Ekaterina Foundation over harsh Western criticism of Russian involvement in Ukraine.   (more…)

The list of artists participating in this summer’s Manifesta biennial has been released, including Guy Ben-Ner, Maria Lassnig, and Francis Alÿs, among others.  The 10th edition of the event will begin on June 28th in St. Petersburg. (more…)

Vasily Kandinsky, Circles within a Circle (1923), Philadelphia Museum of Art: The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950
Photo Credit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY © 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Compiling one of the more ambitious exhibitions of work recently shown on the Russian avant-garde, the recently closed exhibition on the work of Vasily Kandinsky offered perhaps one of the best perspectives on the developing voice of one of the 20th century’s most vital painters.  Charting his move from early impressionist works to the conceptually rigorous formalism that he developed as a consequence of his broader exposure to the European art world after his move to Germany, From Blaue Reiter to the Bauhaus, 1910-1925 is a fitting origins story for this influential artist.

Vasily Kandinsky (Installation View), via Art Observed (more…)

The opening ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics last week prominently featured the touchstones of the Russian avant-garde, The Art Newspaper notes.  References and tributes to Malevich, Tatlin and Rodchenko could be seen throughout the ceremony, but some critics noted that the inclusion of these artists was a bid by Vladimir Putin to culturally tie the country closer to Europe.   “He needs to feel that attempts to become European are immediately appreciated and not rejected,” says Marat Guelman, the curator and former museum director forced from his post at the Perm Museum over political critiques. “Otherwise if he sees that whatever he does he is trashed, he’ll spit on it all and start building an Orthodox Iran.”  (more…)

Kazimir Malevich, Mystic Suprematism (red cross on black circle) (1920-1922), via New York Times

Kazimir Malevich’s impact on the early-Twentieth century Russian avant-garde is difficult to ignore.  Pushing forward the “new art,” he pioneered early minimalist practices and pushed the rupture of modernist art almost simultaneously with the Cubist deconstructions happening further west.  But it was Malevich that ultimately took these same processes to new abstractions, and perhaps what could be considered their limit, rendering pure geometric forms in contrasting, minimal explorations of color and space, ultimately developing the language that would come to define much of Twentieth century fine art.

Kazimir Malevich And The Russian Avant-Garde (Installation View), Via Stedelijk Museum Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij (more…)

Sotheby’s London has announced a non-selling exhibition of works from the collection of Alexey Ananiev, the Russian billionaire whose collection of Soviet Era Russian art will look to challenge the often kitschy perception of much work from the the second half of the twentieth century in the USSR.  “The best artists of communist times did work that was a continuation of the Russian realist art from the early 19th century,” Ananiev says. “With a historical pause of 15 or 20 years, we can now see and appreciate their art in full measure.”  (more…)

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, The Appearance of Collage #6 (2012), Courtesy Pace Gallery

Though Soviet-born artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are New York-based, they were little known in the New York art scene until this Fall season.  Popular in Europe, their 2013 New York tour started with their successfully-launched, 8th rendition of the floating installation, “The Ship of Tolerance”, at the Dumbo Arts Festival.  Ilya Kabakov, a former childrens’ book illustrator and graphic artist did his conceptual art work in secrecy until he accepted a grant to work in Austria and grew to prominence in Europe.  Upon arriving to New York, he reconnected with his distant cousin, Emilia, a former pianist and linguist, and presently an art advisor and curator. She helped him navigate the arts scene in New York and the two soon began collaborating. They married in 1992 and have been sharing credits ever since on everything they have produced with the exception of several of Ilya’s paintings. (more…)

In an emailed press release today, the Saatchi Gallery in London has announced a broad collaborative partnership with the Tsukanova Family Foundation, a London-based charity organization.  The announcement comes after the highly successfully Breaking The Ice: Moscow Art 1960-80s exhibition at Saatchi earlier this year.  “We look forward to using the Gallery’s vast experience to further expand upon this through a series of shows over the course of the next 5 years,” says Igor Tsukanov, Co-Founder of TFF. (more…)

Moscow Biennale Curator Catherine de Zegher has spoken on the current calls for a boycott of Russian art and art events, stating that she has no intent on a boycott or cancellation of the event to protest the current state of civil rights for Russian LGBT citizens.  “I’m not a big believer in provocation,” De Zegher says. “Art that is very provocative is like fast food almost. It flares up, then it’s finished. Of course I do believe in activist gestures, and movement and action, but I think art works in a different way.” (more…)

As he prepares to open his first exhibition in Russia, the Financial Times has sat down with artist John Baldessari to discuss the artist’s ongoing work, and his irreverent view for the art-industrial complex: “I was getting mildly irritated by artists getting branded – ‘This is a Warhol’, ‘This is a de Kooning’ – and you don’t even look. It just has to look like a brand,” He says.  “And I said, I wonder if I can slow that down.” (more…)