Building the Revolution

CaixaForum Barcelona hosts an exhibition of Soviet art and architecture from the 1920s and 30s.

  • 10 March 2011
  • Barcelona

"Building the Revolution. Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935" illustrates one of the most exceptional periods in the history of architecture and the visual arts, one that is reflected in the engagement of such constructivist artists as Lyubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko and Kazimir Malevich and Russian architects like Konstantin Melnikov, Moisei Ginzburg and Alexander Vesnin, as well as the European architects Le Corbusier and Mendelsohn. The exhibition features some 230 works, including models, artworks (paintings and drawings) and photographs, featuring both vintage prints from the 1920s and 30s and contemporary images by the British photographer Richard Pare.

The exhibition "Building the Revolution. Soviet Art and Architecture, 1915-1935" explores a period that is decisive for any understanding our culture today, and it does so through the most complete review ever made of Russian avantgarde art and architecture.

The exhibition, organised by type of building, illustrates the heroic years of Soviet architecture through vintage photographs of each project, taken during construction or soon after completion. These images are juxtaposed with others taken by the architectural photographer Richard Pare over the last fifteen years. Above: DneproGES: Turbine Hall, 1999. Photo Richard Pare, Courtesy of Kicken Berlin. © Richard Pare.
The exhibition, organised by type of building, illustrates the heroic years of Soviet architecture through vintage photographs of each project, taken during construction or soon after completion. These images are juxtaposed with others taken by the architectural photographer Richard Pare over the last fifteen years. Above: DneproGES: Turbine Hall, 1999. Photo Richard Pare, Courtesy of Kicken Berlin. © Richard Pare.

The architecture of the Soviet Revolution is based on ideas of functionality, economy and efficiency fused with creativity and formal daring. As such, Soviet architecture became a model for architects of the modern movement and can still provide a reference for today's designers, faced as they are by the challenge of making maximum use of the available resources to the benefit of the community. The exhibition places particular emphasis on the way in which fine artists and architects joined together under the Bolshevik cause in a period marked by radical departures in art. However, after the institutionalisation of so-called Socialist Realism as the official style imposed by the new Stalinist regime, these artists were considered "undesirables" and their works were sent to the provinces. In this context, the exhibition also reflects on what remains from all that, nearly a century later.

From 1992 to 2010, Richard Pare exhaustively documented the most outstanding buildings from the first revolutionary period as he found them in when he visited these sites after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Pare’s contribution shows the importance of these works whilst also appealing for their restoration. Left: the Shábolovka Radio tower in Moscow, 1988. Photo Richard Pare, Courtesy Kicken Berlin. © Richard Pare.

The exhibition, then, focuses on one of the most exceptional periods in the history of architecture, from the October Revolution to the founding of the USSR. Organised by the Royal Academy of Arts of London in cooperation with Fundació "la Caixa" and the SMCA-Costakis Collection of Thessaloniki, Building the Revolution. Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935 is based on an exhibition produced at SMCA Thessaloniki. Its curators are: MaryAnne Stevens, Royal Academy of Arts (London), and Maria Tsantsanoglou, State Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki), in cooperation with Richard Pare.

"Soviet Art and Architecture 1915-1935" forms part of the 2011 Dual Year Programme from Spain to Russia and from Russia to Spain.

The exhibition is completed by three more large-scale models. Two, from the University of East Anglia’s abstract and constructivist architecture and design collection, illustrate two of Konstantin Melnikov’s most important works: the Rusakov workers’ club and the Melnikov House, both in Moscow. The third model (above) is of the so-called Tatlin Tower, the Monument to the Third International, in a reconstruction made in 2001 and conserved at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg.

Until 17 April 2011
Building the Revolution.
Soviet Art and Architecture, 1915-1935
CaixaForum Barcelona
Av. Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia 6-8, Barcelona

The exhibition focuses on one of the most exceptional periods in the history of architecture, from the October Revolution to the founding of the USSR.
Liubov Popova. Construction space-strenght, 1921. Oil on canvas, 1921. National Museum of Contemporary Art, Costakis Collection, Thessalonica.
The exhibition comprises drawings, models and paintings by artists and architects from the Costakis Collection in the State Museum of Contemporary Art (SMCA), Thessaloniki. These works were recovered at a time when avant-garde architecture was shunned in the USSR. Now, saved from destruction, they constitute unique testimony to those times.
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