The Museum was established in 1988 on Sergey Koval’skiy and Yevgeniy Orlov’s initiative on the territory of The «Pushkinskaya-10″ Art Centre. The founder of the Museum is The «Free Culture» Society. Directors: Marina Koldobskaya (exhibitions of the newest trends; until 2001), Yevgeniy Orlov (since 1998; exhibitions by the artists of the «Gazanevskaya Culture» and by contemporary Russian and foreign artists); the main curator – Andrey Khlobystin.

The Museum owns a collection of works of nonconformist fine arts of the second half of the 20th century. The Museum founded The St Petersburg Archive and Library of Independent Art. The Vadim Voinov «Bridge over the Styx» Gallery, the exposition of which has been built up in collaboration with The Department of the Newest Trends of The State Russian Museum, works as a sub-division of The Museum of Nonconformist Art. In the Museum’s fund The «PHOTOimage» Gallery’s collection of photographs is kept. More than twenty exhibition projects take place in the Museum every year. Since March, 2002 the constant exposition «The Artists-Nonconformists of the Second Half of the 20th Century» is situated in a separate wing the project of which was designed by the artist A. Menus with the financial support from the Culture Committee of the Administration of St Petersburg.
«The Museum’s activity aims at two main goals. Firstly, the Museum collects, keeps and exhibits the unofficial art of the ’50s – ’80s, first of all the Leningrad artistic underground. Secondly, the Museum works with contemporary art, initiates and supports actual projects. Working in these directions, the Museum forms its collection, keeps in touch with curators and collectors in St Petersburg and Russia, develops international contacts, takes part in major city cultural actions.» (Ye. Orlov.)

Exhibitions and projects: «Pushkinskaya’s 10th Anniversary» (painting and photography, 1999), «Searching for the Lost Icon» (M. Koldobskaya’s project, 1999), photographs dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the «Gazanevskaya» culture (1999/2000), «PHOTOimage – 5 years» (2000), the exhibition by Moscow artists «Motherland or Death» (objects, installations, 2000), «GIF.RU – Art in Russia» (presentation of M. Guelman’s Internet project, 2000), «The Mobilization Point of the New Writers’ Cemetery» (action by V. Savchuk, 2000), «Art Media Forum» (a big group exhibition «Media-Art and Mass Media» and a conference with the same name; 2001), presentation of the sites – Laureates and Nominees of the National Intel Internet Awards in the «Net-Art» nomination (2001), memorial exhibitions by B. Smirnov-Rusetskiy, V. Shagin, Ye. Rukhin (all of them in 2000) and by A. Arefyev (2001), exhibitions by the groups «April 17″ (2001), «Mit’ki» (2001), «Svoi» («Our People») (2003), «Nuance» (2003), exhibition of paintings from N. Blagodatov’s collection (2001), the multimedia project by N. Abalakova and A. Zhigalov «Operation House-2″, «Digital PODgallery» (a Russian-American exhibition of computer graphics, 2001), «Electric Blanket» (photo-slide project by the American artists N. Goldin, A. Frame and F. Frank dedicated to the problem of AIDS, 2001), «The Musicians’ Secret Life» (an exhibition of works of fine arts by rock musicians, 2002), «Passions according to Malevich» (suprematist paintings and drawings of the 1950s – ’70s; 2003); «Lost Property Office» (in collaboration with The City Center of Lost Documents and Means of Communication, 2003), «To Russia with Love» (eleven artists representing the Academy of Fine Arts of the city of Umea, Sweden, 2003), etc.. In the framework of «The Unofficial Capital» Festival the exhibition «Flesh and Blood: the New St Petersburg Expressionism» took place (2000), personal exhibitions by Ye. Mikhnov-Voytenko and I. Orlov were held in the framework of the all-Russia programme «Abstraction in Russia: the 20th Century» (2001/2002), in 2003 The Festival of Nonconformist Art took place. The Museum takes part in the yearly city festival «The Autumn Photo Marathon».

The artists: N. Abalakova, A. Avetisyan, Z. Azizov, V. Andreyev, A. Arefyev, L. Astreyn, V. Afonichev, B. Badalov, BAK (B. Kozlov), A. Baranov, A. Basin, N. Batisheva, A. Bikhter, Ye. Bogdanova, L. Bolmat, L. Borisov, B. Borsh, Zh. Brovina, V. Brylin, V. Bugayev, V. Val’ran, A. Van’kov, A. Vasilyev, I. Vasilyeva, R. Vasmi, S. Veyerin, A. Rappoport, A. Vermishev, P. Veshev, V. Viderman, A. Vladimirov, I. Vlasova, V. Voinov, F. Volosenkov, V. Gavril’chik, B. Gadayeva, Yu. Galetskiy, O. Garkusha, V. Gerasimenko, Ye. Gindper, Giper-Puper (V. Kuznetsov), A. Gladilov, V. Golubev, L. Golubeva, A. Goncharuk, V. Gooss, Ye. Gorchakova, A. Goryayev, D. Gretskiy, Ye. Gritsenko, T. Gritsyuk, V. Gromov, A. Gurevich, Yu. Gurov, V. Gutsevich, A. Devyatinov, L. Dolinskiy, O. Dragomoshenko, V. Dukhovlinov, Yu. Dyshlenko, V. Dyachenko, L. Dyachenko, A. Zhigalov, N. Zhilina, I. Zhurkov, V. Zabelin (VIK), O. Zayka, Yu. Zaretskaya, N. Zverev, L. Zimin, G. Zubkov, I. Ivanov, M. Ivanov, V. Ivanov-Voyenushkin, Yu. Ivanova, M. Isayev, M. Kaverzina, D. Kalinin, N. Kakhiani, I. Kirillova, A. Kiril’, A. Kitayev, V. Klever, D. Kovalyov, S. Koval’skiy, A. Kozhin, Yu. Kozlov, M. Koldobskaya, S. Komarova, V. Konevin, Ye. Konovalova, T. Konfarovich, A. Korolyov, O. Kotel’nikov, B. Koshelokhov, V. Kubasov, A. Kuznetsov, R. Kurnosov, S. Lebedev, V. Lukka, Yu. Lyukshin, O. Lyagachev, V. Makarov, V. Maksimov, A. Maltabarov, G. Malyshev, G. Manzhayev, O. Maslov, L. Masterkova, Yu. Medvedev, A. Menus, K. Miller, B. Mitavskiy, A. Mitin, Vl. Mikhaylov, Vyach. Mikhailov, Ye. Mikhnov-Voytenko, O. Moiseyeva, A. Morev, N. Nelyubina, L. Nikitina, Yu. Nikiforov, O. Nikolayenko, T. Novikov, L. Nosov, S. Nosova, M. Obukhova, Vad. Ovchinnikov, V. Ovchinnikov, I. Olasyuk, N. Orlov, Ye. Orlov, I. Orlov, P. Okhta (Batrakov), Yu. Petrochenkov, V. Pobozhenskiy, A. Podobed, Yu. Potapov, A. Pud, A. Rapoport, Alina Rappoport, O. Rostrosta, V. Rokhlin, Yu. Rybakov, Ye. Savchenko, N. Sazhin, A. Semichov, P. Semchenko, S. Sergeyev, S. Sigey, Ye. Sidorov, V. Snesar’, V. Solovyova, I. Sotnikov, A. Speka, V. Starkov, V. Sterligov, V. Sukhorukov, N. Sychyov, B. Tarantul, V. Tikhomirov, Vlad. Tikhomirov, I. Tikhomirova, L. Tishkov, T. Tmin (Izotov), V. Trofimov, Ye. Tykotskiy, I. Tyurin, G. Ustyugov, A. Uyanayev, Ye. Figurina, V. Filimonov, A. Filippov, S. Filippov, O. Florenskaya, A. Florenskiy, O. Khvostov, D. Khmyznikov, Ye. Khokhlov, S. Tsvirkunova, O. Tselkov, M. Tserush, A. Chezhin, V. Chernobrisov, B. Chetkov, A. Chistyakov, V. Shagin, D. Shagin, V. Shalabin, R. Shalamberidze, Sh. Swartz, S. Sheff, V. Shinkaryov, V. Shmagin, D. Shorin, D. Shubin, G. Elinson, A. Ender, G. Yukhvets, Ye. Yufit, Yan (A. Orlov), A. Yartsev, V. Yatsik, V. Yashke.

The Museum of Nonconformist Art is an exhibition, scientific and archive centre for studying and propagandizing nonconformist art as well as the contemporary non-commercial art of Russia, Europe and America.

It was the collection of works of contemporary art gathered in the ’80s – ’90s by the «unofficial» artists and presenting the nonconformist art of Leningrad-St Petersburg of the second half of the 20th century that served as the material for the beginning of The Museum’s work.

In 1998 – 2003 The Museum of Nonconformist Art had held 40 exhibitions, issued 30 catalogues and booklets, created an archive with more than 1000 items in keeping, which includes besides other objects a unique collection of digital video materials on exhibitions and cultural actions held in St Petersburg during the last 14 years.

The Museum actively co-operates with the leading exhibition venues and museums of our city: The Hermitage, The State Russian Museum, The Museum of the History of St Petersburg, etc..

In 2002 a big two-year project for presenting The Museum’s collection in the university museums of the USA began.

In connection with the 300th anniversary of the foundation of St Petersburg The Museum’s workers worked out the project of holding «The Festival of Nonconformist Art» which should present The Museum’s collection as well as the history of the movement of the artists-nonconformists, in order to acquaint the broad audience of the inhabitants of St Petersburg, the guests of the Northern Capital, as well as the specialists in the field of art studies and history, with these works and events. The project appeared because of the necessity to fill up the gap in the contemporary art studies and to connect the times of the Russian avant-garde of the 1910s – 1920s and the art of the second half of the 20th century, which had been torn apart by the invasion of the Soviet ideology into art.

Director of The Museum of Nonconformist Art
Yevgeniy Orlov.

A Short Course in the History of Nonconformism

The Soviet cosmogony, which built all the surrounding world according to the principle of the struggle of irreconcilable opposites and contrast, by itself implied and provoked the rise of an opposition. The forming of this cultural system can be seen in Russia in the 1920s, when the world divided into the old and the new, the bourgeois and the proletarian, the functional and the decorative, etc.. From our distance in time we can speak of a united cultural system which included oppositions in the same way as the Barocco style consisted of Catholicism and Protestantism, Neo-Classicism and Rococo, Poussin and Rubens.

The Soviet culture, as well as any culture oriented towards an utopia, implied a rigid structure and rigid control, and accordingly brought any originality to the periphery, into the marginal zones. In a paradoxical way, those marginal zones fed all the structure as a whole and supported its vital functions, for a structure that is simplified and deprived of variety is doomed to perish soon. But the marginal phenomena themselves – the associations of independent artists, writers, musicians, free-thinking scientists – also fed on the energy of the opposition, and in the end, having decomposed the huge ideological machine, they themselves fell apart. It turned out that the creative individuality left to itself, the one which had been struggled for for so long, felt quite uncomfortable facing the offensive of the new on-the-make ideology. In that situation the experience of the nonconformist movement of the second half of the 20th century and its spitiual achievements embodied in works of art became very actual again.

Conformism (from the late Latin conformis – similar, corresponding) is a moral-political term which means time-serving, passive adoption of the existing order of things. Accordingly, nonconformism is a refusal to follow the prevailing opinion, it is defending one’s own view of the world, – and it is a phenomenon that has always exhisted in the human society. For the first time the term «nonconformism» was applied to the Polish «Solidarity» movement. In the beginning of the 1980s it began to be applied to the independent Leningrad artists united in «The Society of Experimental Fine Arts» (TEII), and then to all the independent art in Russia beginning with the 1940s. The independent artists’ struggle for the freedom of self-expression, besides other things, cleared the way for the artistic commerce that became a danger more serious for the freedom of art than the former Soviet official control. Now it is again possible to speak of nonconformism or «post-nonconformism» of the last decade of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st centuries, which tries to withstand the new ideology of greed.

The unique phenomenon of the nonconformist culture is only beginning to be studied. In the situation determined by the global ideological opposition in the sphere of culture in the 1940s – 1980s the social-political understanding and description of the situation often hid the artistic problems of art. Nevertheless, among the independent artists and writers who were far from the official academic and museum circles, versions of self-describing of the nonconformist art as a cultural phenomenon, which were various and interesting for us, were brought forward. Nonconformism looks related to those world culture phenomena of various scales which were formed by the parallel exhistence of different versions of art that were at enmity with each other or excluded each other. These are, for instance, the situation of Iconoclasm of the 8th – 9th centuries A. C. in Byzantium and China; The Salon of the Outcast (1863) and «the Cursed Poets» in France; the movement of The Travelling Exhibitions and of the writers-populists in Russia at the same time. But unlike those phenomena, in the case of the nonconformist culture the opposition was not between the accepted version of art and the innovative movements, and not between religious concepts, but between the repressive state ideological machine and the artists of quite various and even opposite artistic views who were united by the struggle for the freedom of creative work. Thus the nonconformist culture directly inherited the problems of the various trends of the Russian Avant-Garde after 1932, when all of them were opposed to the Socialist Realism.

In the 1950s – 1960s the Leningrad independent art (and it was the art of Leningrad that the almanac was devoted to in the first place) occupied an undoubtedly leading position. Here there was the forward position of the artistic experiment and existential search. People came here from other cities and regions in order to learn the news and to get some energetic supply.

Osip Mandel’shtam singled out the two original lines in Russian literature: the monastic-academic, conservative tradition and the line connected with the element of the lower language. Using this allegory one can characterize the two main tendencies in the development of the independent after-war art in Leningrad. The first tendency was embodied in the movement of the straight pupils of the avant-garde artists of the beginning of the century (Malevich, Filonov, Matyushin, Mansurov and others), which was unique for the world modernist practice. The energy of the avant-garde’s titans secretly flickered during the dead times of Stalin’s rule, and as soon as the totalitarian pressure weakened slightly, it put out new shoots. Their heirs – Sterligov, Kondratyev, Glebova, the Enders started to restore the apartment schools, to continue the theoretical and formal search of their teachers. Those were the priests of art in exile. For them the Russian avant-garde «remained a circle of secret but true professionalism, it remained religion and hope».

The second, elemental, tendency was embodied by the expressive art of young artists in the end of the 1940s, which was alternative to the official order. It is difficult to explain their appearance by external factors. Such artists of genius as Alexander Arefyev, Vladimir Shagin, Rikhard Vasmi, Sholom Shvarts, Valentin Gromov began to look for new artistic expression not thanks to something and not in spite of something, but out of inner burning, passion and irrational will towards art. This was a movement that in all the world was formed by the common feeling of life of the young people who were tired of totalitarism, and thus it was related to the French existentialists as well as to the American beatniks. But the Leningrad «Order of Destitute Painters» (that was how the group called itself originally; later it was called «Arefyev’s Circle») was a much more marginal phenomenon. The people of that circle deliberately went to the very bottom of life and were directly persecuted by the state. Prisons, drugs, lunatic asylums combined with going to The Hermitage and The Public Library every day and with the extremely romantic service to high art.

But the originality of the Leningrad art of that time did not consist only of those two trends. Largely thanks to the activity of the remarkable director and artist N. P. Akimov who taught at The Theatre Institute, in the middle of the 1950s in Leningrad there appeared several outstanding artists, who worked in the style of «abstract expressionism», at once. Now it is becoming clear that the artistic search of Ye. Mikhnov-Voytenko, M. Kulakov, V. Kubasov, V. Mikhaylov and others went on parallel to the synchronous processes in the art of Western Europe and America, and sometimes a great deal ahead of them.

Exceptional achievements in the sphere of painting were made by the school of O. A. Sidlin, which inherited the traditions of VKhUTEIN (Petrov-Vodkin, Osmyorkin and others). The remarkable painters of this school, such as Igor Ivanov, Anatoliy Basin, Yevgeniy Goryunov, became outstanding persons of the nonconformist movement.

The forming of the unofficial art as a movement was determined by the liberalization of the Soviet culture after the end of the dead epoch of Stalin, during Khrushyov’s «thaw» of the end of the 1950s / the beginning the 1960s. The groups of the ’50s – ’60s engaged in pure art and kept away from politics. The only organized action, called «The Riggers’ Exhibition», in The Hermitage (M. Shemyakin, Vlad. Ovchinnikov, O. Lyagachev and others), was an exception,and its hard consequences showed that Brezhnev’s «counter-reformation» had come. The suffocation of the «stagnation» made the independent artists organize themselves in the struggle for survival, for the very opportunity to engage in art, to be considered artists without being repressed and to have access to the broad audience. For the authorities independent art became equal to dissidence. Correspondingly, inside it groups that felt a taste for politics as a means of achieving artistic aims as well as aims that were far from art began to arise. Thus, for example, the Jewish group «Alef» was formed according to the principle of nationality, in order to go abroad. This gave birth to commercial speculations as well, such as the joke with the exhibition of the fictional «11 artists», who were said to be prisoners – victims of repressions, which exhibition was organized in secret for foreigners only.

Strictly speaking, the existence of the organized nonconformist movement is limited to 14-15 years (1974 – 1988), beginning with the first organized actions of artists in Moscow («The Bulldozer Exhibition», 1974) and in Leningrad (the exhibitions in The Palace of Culture named after Gaza, 1974 and in The «Nevskiy» Palace of Culture, 1975) and finishing with the decomposition of the Soviet ideological repressive system in the process of the Perestroyka. At the same time, if one proceeds from the meaning of the term, all the independent art beginning with the 1940s can be called «nonconformism».

The history of the independent art in Leningrad in the 1970s – 1980s is usually regarded as two «waves». The first one is the epoch of the two large exhibitions in The Palace of Culture named after Gaza and The «Nevskiy» Palace of Culture. The eclecticism of the styles of that time corresponded to the understanding of the ideals of democracy and the freedom of art. That was an organized opposition not only to the state but to all the inert society which was oriented towards the average philistine values.

The artists found the sources of the true, spiritual art in the tradition of the classical Russian Avant-Garde of the 1910s – 1930s, in the Western modernism, in the religious art, the classic art and folklore. Non-comparable artists united only by being outside the monolanguage of the official culture found themselves at one and the same side of the barricades. A society of independent, rejected artists was forming, and it immediately attracted many adherents and followers: the attendance and the unofficial resonance of the exhibitions were unprecedented. The artists – Rukhin, Zharkikh, Arefyev – were as much talented as the public leaders of the movement as they were as artists. Nevertheless, the authorities managed to put out the first wave. The invisible war between the state and the nonconformists became more intense and proceeded to the next stage. A large number of artists had to emigrate, the others went into the underground. A time of dejection came.

Parallel to all this during the same years a new «culture», a new generation of artists, young as well as of the same age as the Gaza-Nevshiki, but having already a different feeling of life and using different strategies in the struggle for the recognition of their art, ripened. This generation organized the movement of the «second wave» that began with the famous apartment exhibition in the house under repair in Bronnitskaya St. in 1981, which lead to the creation of an alternative association of artists – TEII (The Society of Experimental Fine Arts), the largest and the most influential one in all the Soviet epoch. The dramatic peripetia of the artistic life and the discussions of that time are described in the second volume of «The Gallery».

The generalized image of the artist of the time of the exhibitions in The Palace of Culture named after Gaza and The «Nevskiy» Palace of Culture is a genius who is not understood, a prophet, a victim of repressions. He strives to speak more about art and he sooner defends himself than attacks or accuses. From the point of view of the Gaza-Nevskiy veterans, the new generation was interested in the unofficial artist’s image and way of life almost more than in art itself, and its quality qualification of the works of art when choosing comrades-in-arms was evidently too low. That was close to the reality. The thing is that the next generation, in practice if not in words, began to understand the image of the artist much wider. That corresponded to the process of the destruction of the common criteria of evaluating a work of art, the process of the devaluation of the notions of style, authorship, etc., which had been going on in the world since 1960s. The artists of the «second wave» generation are characterized by an ability to press, a strategic cast of mind, readiness to attack bravely and to manoeuvre in order to achieve their aim as well. From the «second wave» the new type of artist-curator comes, and this type formed the artistic scene for the next decade, which allowed the independent movement to preserve its unity, to survive and to go through all the trials of the following decades. The artists of the new generation really turned out to be natural creators of myths and masters of public relations: it was largely on this basis that the success of movements and enterprises headed by such participants of «The Bronnitskaya Exhibition» as T. NovikovНовиков («The New Artists»), D. Shagin («Mit’ki»), S. Koval’skiy («5/4″), K. Miller, B. Koshelokhov, Yu. Rybakov was built..

L. N. Gumilyov wrote that in the epochs of ethnic decline those who in other times would be warriors and politicians become artists. Indeed, the nonconformist circle absorbed in itself a great number of passionaries, among whom there were mere ascetics of art as well as people who strove to restore social justice and the lost spirituality through art and artistic life.

Andrey Khlobystin,
Art Critic, the Main Scientific Worker
of The Museum of Nonconformist Art.

For details see The Museum’s Web Site.