2nd German Expressionism movement

1911 to 1914

Munich, Germany

Der Blaue Reiter

(The Blue Rider)

Cover of Der Blaue Reiter almanac, c.1912

The spiritual in art

The spiritual and symbolic associations of color

The connection between visual art and music

Contemporary art, primitive and folk art, children's paintings

Wassily Kandinsky, On the Spiritual in Art ,1911

the spiritual life of humanity as a large triangle similar to a pyramid

Exhibitions touring Germany in 1911 and 1912 

Der Blaue Reiter

Wassily Kandinsky

Franz Marc

August Macke

Paul Klee

Gabriele Münter

Albert Bloch

Natalia Goncharova

Marianne von Werefkin

Lyonel Feininger

Arnold Schoenberg

Der Blaue Reiter,1903

Wassily Kandinsky

Composition IVo/c 191162 7/8 x 98 5/8

Wassily Kandinsky

Blue Horse I o/c 1911112.5 x 84.5 cm

The fate of the animalso/c 1913196 x 266 cm 

Franz Marc

Arabian Café o/c 191427 x 21,8 cm

August Macke

Kandinsky stressed the impact of color and its association with music,

explaining that "color is a means of exerting direct influence upon the soul.

Color is a keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its

many strings.“

MoMA wall text

KandinskyWinter 1914

NON-OBJECTIVE

Wassily Kandinsky

During WWI

Non-representational abstraction

The Russian Revolution and Suprematism

Belief in an art which expresses a reality beyond the material, a consciousness like that of a meditative state in which ordinary reality is transcended;

eastern and Buddhist influences, the Theosophical Society

(Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian, Duchamp, Pollock, Rothko, etc)

The Russian Avant Garde

Suprematism

(1913-1918)

“Suprematism is the rediscovery of pure art that, in the course of time, had become obscured by the accumulation of 'things‘.”

Kasimir Malevich, The Non-Objective World

Geometric forms as paradigms of spiritual evolution

sacred geometry

“Under Suprematism I understand the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the Suprematist the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.”

What artists found appealing about the various arcane religious and philosophical systems was

their underlying premise that the spiritual world is governed by laws that mirror natural laws and that can

be expressed in symbols. The idea is akin to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s notion that every appearance in nature

corresponds to some state of mind. Geometric forms are thus paradigms of spiritual evolution.

The spiritual world, like the natural world, is charged with energy, producing cosmic vibrations and

human auras. The spiritual principles that intrigued certain artists included synesthesia, the overlap

between the senses by which a painting can simulate music; duality, the idea that the cosmos reflects

an underlying principle of yin and yang; and so-called "sacred geometry," the belief that, as Plato put it,

"God geometricizes."

Spirituality in Abstract Art by Pamela Schaeffer on the subject of the exhibition "The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985”.

Kazimir Malevich

Morning in the Village after Snowstorm, 1912

The Woodcutter, 1912

Malevich, Cow and Violin, 1913 Malevich, Composition with Mona Lisa, 1913

The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything that is already finished, already made, or already existent in the world — it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by the way of the people.

Suprematism

El Lissitzky

"the supremacy of pure feeling"

"The square = feeling, the white field = the void beyond this feeling."

Black Square1913, o/c, 31 x 31

Kazimir

Malevich

From Cubism to Suprematism

Kazimir

Malevich

The Black Circle

1913, 41 x 41”

Black Square , 1915

31 3/16x31 5/16"

o/c 31 3/16x31 5/16"

Kazimir

Malevich

Kazimir

Malevich

Suprematist Painting:

Eight Red Rectangles

o/c, 1915, 22 x 19”

Black Square and Red Square, 1915

Suprematist Composition. 1915

Kazimir

Malevich

Suprematist Composition. 1916

Supremus No. 56

1916, o/c, 31 x 28 “

Kasimir Malevich

Kazimir Malevich

Suprematist Composition: White on White, 1918, o/c, 31 x 31”

Malevich, 0.10. Last Futurist Exhibition (Black Square), 1915

Kasimir Malevich lying in state in his Leningrad apartment (17-18 May 1935)© 2006, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg

Malevich, Black Square , 1915

Kasimir Malevich, Self-Portrait. 1933.

Russian Abstraction

Art of the Revolution (1917-21)

Constructivism

Between the Wars

Vladimir Tatlin 

Relief c. 1914 found objectsMetal and leather on wood 24 3/4 x 20 7/8 in. 

Corner Counter Relief, 1915Relief, 1914

Vladimir Tatlin

Found objects

Tatlin

Model for Monument to the Third International, 1919-20

Tatlin, Model for Monument to the Third International, 1919-20

iron, glass and steeltowering symbol of modernity

The tower's main form was a twin helix which spiraled up to 400 m in height,

which visitors would be transported around with the aid of various mechanical devices.

The main framework would contain three enormous rotating geometric structures.

At the base of the structure was a cube which was designed as a venue for lectures,

conferences and congress meetings, and would complete a rotation in the span of one year.

In the centre of the structure was a cone, housing executive activities and completing a

rotation once a month. The topmost one, a cylinder, was to house an information centre,

issuing news bulletins and manifestos via telegraph, radio and loudspeaker, and would

complete a rotation once a day. There were also plans to install a gigantic open-air screen

on the cylinder, and a further projector which would be able to cast messages across

the clouds on any overcast day

,

Aleksandr Rodchenko

Compass and Ruler Drawing 2 (1914-15)Compass and Ruler Drawing (1914-15)

Non-Objective Painting: Black on Black Date: 1918

Aleksandr Rodchenko

o/c, 32 1/4 x 31 1/4"

Oval Hanging Construction Number 12 ca. 1920

Plywood, open construction partially painted with aluminum paint, and wire24 x 33 x 18 1/2 in.

Aleksandr Rodchenko

Rodchenko, Hanging Construction, c.1920

Aleksandr Rodchenko

Triptych: Pure Colors: Red, Yellow, Blue, 1921

Aleksandr Rodchenko

Gouache on paper 33 x 20"

Advertisment for cooking oil, 1923“Attention working masses Three times cheaper than butter!More nutritious than other oils! Nowhere else as at Mossel'prom.”

Box for “Our Industry” caramels from Mossel’prom, 1923

Aleksandr Rodchenko

Advertisement for cookies from the Krasnyi Oktiabr' (Red October) factory1923 Gouache on paper 32 x 21 3/4"

I eat cookies from the Krasnyi Oktiabr' factory,

formerly Einem. I don't buy anywhere except at

Mossel'prom.

Poster for the Propaganda of the Book

Aleksandr Rodchenko

Proun, 1920

Gouache and watercolor on paper, 15 x 15”

Proun, Prounen

“Design for the confirmation of the new”

“The goal-oriented creation” (das zielbewußte Schaffen)

Abstraction, art for the masses (the universal language)

"the station where one changes from painting to architecture."

El Lissitzky

shifting axes and multiple perspectives

Proun, 1920

Proun, 1925

El Lissitzky

distemper, tempera, varnish and pencil on canvas

The Constructor, Self Portrait, 1925self-portrait photomontage

El Lissitzky

El Lissitzky, Beat The Whites With The Red Wedge lithograph poster for the political department of the western front, 1920

Bey Belych meaning: "Beat Whites"White is right: political color and position of anti-revolutionaries

White was a standard color of anti-revolutionary forcesCircle was s supremtists symbol for unchangeable

Painted during the Civil War in Russia (1917-1921) between Reds and Whites

Klinom krasnim meaning: "With Red Wedge"Red is left: political color and position of communists

Red was a standard symbol of revolution

Edge was asupremtist symbol of something new

(the first installation, viewer as part of the work)

El Lissitzky

“The image is not a painting, but a structure around which we must circle, looking at it from all sides, peering down from above, investigating from below.”

Proun room

The Great Berlin Art Exhibition 1923

“The goal-oriented creation”

Kandinsky, 1920’3 & 30’s

Several Circles (Einige Kreise), 1926.

Oil on canvas, 55” x 55”.

Wassily Kandinsky

Geometric purity v. textured background Molecular world and solar systems