The fine art of Leningrad is an important component of Russian Soviet art—in the opinion of the art historians Vladimir Gusev and Vladimir Leniashin, "one of its most powerful currents".В. А. Гусев, В. А. Леняшин. Ленинградскому изобразительному искусству шестьдесят лет / Изобразительное искусство Ленинграда. Выставка произведений ленинградских художников. Л: Художник РСФСР, 1981. С. 13. This widely used term embraces the creative lives and the achievements of several generations of Leningrad painters, sculptors, graphic artists and creators of decorative and applied art from 1917 to the early 1990s.
1917–1923
The revolutionary events of 1917–1918 changed the course of artistic life in Petrograd. They affected the Academy of Arts, exhibition and creative life, the activities of artistic associations and questions of artistic practice and theory. At the Academy of Arts students' lessons were interrupted for a year and resumed only in autumn 1918. By a decree of the Council of People's Commissars issue on 12 April 1918 the Academy of Arts in the sense of an assembly of academicians was abolished. By the same decree for the training of future artists instead of the Higher Artistic College (VKhU) the Petrograd State Free Artistic Workshops (PGSKhM) were established. The task of organizing them was entrusted to the Fine Arts department of the People's Commissariat for Education, which was headed by representatives of the "leftists". For 15 years the academy became the arena for an intense struggle over issues of the organization of artistic education and the development of Soviet art. On 12 April 1918 the Council of People's Commissars also adopted a decree "on the monuments of the republic" that has gone down in history as "Lenin's decree on monumental propaganda". The decree called for the removal of memorials erected in honour of the tsars and their servants and the production of monuments to Russia's Socialist revolution.Декрет СНК "О памятниках республики" от 12 апреля 1918 года
Despite the complications caused by the change of regime, the civil war and foreign intervention, artistic groupings – Mir iskusstva, Peredvizhniki, the Arkhip Kuindzhi Society, the Commune of Artists, and the Society of Individualist Artists – continued to operate in Petrograd. In 1922 the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR) was formed and the artist Nikolai Dormidontov became head of its Petrograd branch.Sergei V. Ivanov. The Leningrad School of Painting. Essays on the History. St Petersburg, ARKA Gallery Publishing, 2019. P.399. Among the participants in exhibitions between 1917 and 1923 were such artists as Nathan Altman, Mikhail Avilov, Isaak Brodsky, Boris Grigoriev, Ilya Repin, Vladimir Makovsky, Nikolay Dubovskoy, Osip Braz, Konstantin Makovsky, Boris Kustodiev, Sergey Konenkov, George Savitsky, Mykola Samokysh, Arkady Rylov, Stanislav Zhukovsky, Vladimir Kuznetsov, Wassily Kandinsky, Alexandre Benois, Vladimir Baranov-Rossine, Pavel Filonov, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Nicholas Roerich, Marc Chagall, Kazimir Malevich, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Alexander Kiselyov, Ivan Bilibin, Zinaida Serebriakova, Piotr Buchkin, Yury Annenkov, Rudolf Frentz, Aleksander Golovin and some others. Between them, they represented the main directions and tendencies in contemporary art. Some of them, such as Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Pavel Filonov, Marc Chagall and Nicholas Roerich were figures of world rank.
Among the most significant works from this period critics name In the Azure Expanse (1918) by Arkady Rylov, Celebration Marking the Opening of the 2nd Congress of the Comintern on Uritsky Square on 19 June 1920 (1921) by Boris Kustodiev,В. Ганеева, В. Гусев, А. Цветова. Изобразительное искусство Ленинграда. Выставка произведений ленинградских художников. Москва. Ноябрь 1976 – январь 1977. Л: Художник РСФСР, 1981. С. 24—25. Victory over Eternity (1921) and Living Head (1923) by Pavel Filonov, Portrait of Miron Sherling (1918) by Yury Annenkov, Self-Portrait (1918), Morning Still Life (1918) and Portrait of Anna Akhmatova (1922) by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin,Живопись первой половины ХХ века (Н—Р) / Альманах. Вып. 404. СПб: Palace Editions, 2013. С. 85, 87. The Black Square by Kazimir Malevich,Живопись первой половины ХХ века (Л, М) / Альманах. Вып. 331. СПб: Palace Editions, 2011. С. 92. and Portrait of Nadezhda Dobychina (1920) by Aleksander Golovin.Живопись первой половины ХХ века (Г—И). СПб: Palace Editions, 2000. С. 33. These works testify to the multi-directional development of Petrograd's fine art, in which various tendencies, styles, and directions were represented by striking leaders.
Among the art exhibitions, the largest were the "First State Free Exhibition of Works of Art", held in the Winter Palace in 1919 with 300 participants,Sergei V. Ivanov. The Leningrad School of Painting. Essays on the History. St Petersburg, ARKA Gallery Publishing, 2019. P.398. and the "Exhibition of Paintings by Petrograd Artists of All Directions. 1918–1923", held at the Academy of Arts in 1923 with 263 participants.Каталог выставки картин художников Петрограда всех направлений за пятилетний период деятельности. 1918–1923. Петроград: Академия художеств, 1923. Exhibitions were staged of paintings by members of the Kuindzhi Society, the Commune of Artists, Peredvizhniki and Mir iskusstva, as well as the traditional autumn and spring exhibitions. The venues for them were the halls of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, the Academy of Arts, the Museum of the city (the former Anichkov Palace) and the Hermitage. The year 1920 saw one-man exhibitions of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky.
In 1919 a Museum of Artistic Culture was formed in Petrograd and in 1923 the Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhUK) formed under its auspices, headed by Kazimir Malevich.Sergei V. Ivanov. The Leningrad School of Painting. Essays on the History. St Petersburg, ARKA Gallery Publishing, 2019. P.399.
In 1922 in Petrograd, on the basis of a private studio foundry, an artistic casting facility was established. Later it was transformed into the Monumentskuptura artistic casting works, which produced monumental art in bronze, granite and marble.
In this period a Leningrad school of graphic art formed. The cultural revolution created an active readership of many millions, presenting graphic art with new tasks. Petrograd artists became involved in the creation of illustrations for a series of books called "The People's Library". The time produced publications that became the zenith of book art: Pushkin's Bronze Horseman with illustrations by Alexandre Benois and Dostoyevsky's White Nights featuring drawings by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky.Матафонов, В. С. Развитие ленинградской графики / Изобразительное искусство Ленинграда. Выставка произведений ленинградских художников. Л: Художник РСФСР, 1981. С. 431. Posters as an art form acquired particular topicality and political incisiveness in this period. Notable examples are Nikolai Kochergin's works Everybody to the Defence of Petrograd! (1919) and It's Wrangel's Turn! (1920), as well as the posters known as the "ROSTA Windows". Drawings of Lenin made from life by the artists Nathan Altman, Isaak Brodsky, and Piotr Buchkin became the foundation for a whole genre of "Leniniana" in Soviet fine art.
An innovative line of work was the festive decoration of Petrograd for the early anniversaries of the October Revolution. Among the many people involved were the artists Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Boris Kustodiev, Isaak Brodsky, Arkady Rylov, and Nathan Altman, the sculptors Leonid Sherwood and Sarah Lebedeva, the graphic artists Vladimir Lebedev, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Sergey Chekhonin, the architects Lev Rudnev and Ivan Fomin. Their ideas and approaches to a large extent determined the characteristics of the nascent new Soviet art of decorating public spaces that answered the call for monumental propaganda.Немиро, О. В. Современное декоративно-оформительское искусство Ленинграда / Изобразительное искусство Ленинграда. Выставка произведений ленинградских художников. Л: Художник РСФСР, 1981. С. 457.
World fame accrued to Petrograd applied art through the agitation porcelain produced by the State Porcelain Factory (previously the Imperial Porcelain Factory, later the Leningrad Lomonosov Porcelain Factory). The factory was found to have large stocks of unpainted items and the decision was taken to employ them not simply as tableware, but primarily as a vehicle of revolutionary propaganda. The inspiration and "spirit" of the factory's artistic activities was Sergey Chekhonin, who became head of the painting department at the State Porcelain Factory in 1917. His very first works already had an agitation purpose, including the greatest of them – the anniversary dish produced for 25 October 1918 (the coat of arms of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic worked in flowers). Sergey Chekhonin personally and others working from his drawings painted a large number of plates with slogans and the initials of the RSFSR, dishes, cups and whole services decorated with a pattern of many flowers and gilding. Besides the purely ornamental and allegorical pieces, the factory also produced from Sergey Chekhonin's drawings a series of graphic portraits of the leaders of the world proletariat as well as a large oval dish bearing the autographs of all the most prominent figures of the October Revolution.Голлербах, Э. Государственный фарфоровый завод и художники // Русское искусство, № 2—3. Петроград, 1923. Artists involved in the creation of agitation porcelain included М. М. Adamovich, N. I. Altman, Alexandra Chekotikhina—Pototskaya, Natalia Danko, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Alexander Samokhvalov, Pavel Kuznetsov and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky.
1924–30
On 21 January 1924 Lenin died. On 26 January, by a resolution of the Second Congress of Soviets of the recently formed USSR, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad.Sergei V. Ivanov. The Leningrad School of Painting. Essays on the History. St Petersburg, ARKA Gallery Publishing, 2019. P.399. For the fine arts in the city this event had more than merely formal consequences. As early as the summer of 1924 an exhibition was held at the Academy of Arts of competition entries for a monument to Lenin. First prize was awarded to a design by the architect Iosif Langbard in a revolutionary romantic style. On 7 November 1926, the ninth anniversary of the October Revolution, one of the most famous monuments to the Soviet leader was unveiled on the square by the Finland Railway Station (Lenin on the Armoured Car), sculptor Sergey Evseev, architects Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Gelfreykh. In 1925 a monument to the assassinated revolutionary V. Volodarsky (created by the sculptors Matvey Manizer and Lina Bleze-Manizer together with the architect Vladimir Vitman) was inaugurated, as was another to the pioneer Russian Marxist Georgy Plekhanov (sculptor Ilya Ginsburg) by the Technological Institute. In 1928 a monument to Dmitri Mendeleev, also by Ginsburg, was set up, again near the Technological Institute. In 1925 a monument to Lenin by the Leningrad sculptor Vasily Kozlov (from 1919 chairman of the Petrograd committee of sculptors, later professor of the sculpture faculty of the Academy of Arts) was set up in the southern Russian city of Taganrog. In 1927 a monument to Lenin by the same sculptor was unveiled in front of the Smolny Institute, which had been the HQ of the October Revolution. These works established a sort of canon for subsequent depictions of Lenin in Soviet art.