By Tatyana Shekhter

A Historical Essay

I

The non-official art of St Petersburg is called «nonconformism» for its rejection of the official culture; it is called «post-avant-garde» because its authors considered themselves to be heirs of the avant-garde art of the 20th century; it is called «the underground» for its way of existence and the «partisan» methods of its activity; it is called «the second culture», for this movement created its own system of «life-support» including organizational, enlightening, publishing activity and even artistic education.

The ideas and search in the Soviet art of the 1920s – 1930s were known and being developed in the studios of P. Filonov’s and K. Malevich’s followers and other artists as well. In the 50s Konashevich and Tyshler, Traugot and Glebova continued to work. A special part in the preserving of the experimental traditions of the 20s – 30s was played by the black-and-white artists.

In the second half of the 50s, during the «thaw», a new generation of artists, born not so much of the preserved traditions as of the new social and cultural context, appears.

The Leningrad non-official art was born in the «heart» of the St Petersburg academic culture – in the Secondary Artistic School attached to The Academy of Fine Arts. Its first authors – A. Arefyev, V. Shagin, G. Ustyugov and their friends and people holding the same views – were pupils of this school and almost simultaneously were expelled «for formalism». They created their own artistic group, the members of which were youngsters aged from 14 to 16, and called themselves «The Order of Destitute Painters» (later «The Order of Non-Selling Painters»). The union of the young authors became for them their own artistic school. Arefyev’s group leaned on the traditions of one of the most radical groups of the 20s – «The Circle», which traditions they accepted from G. N. Traugot and V. P. Pakulin.

The energetic and bold language of Arefyev and the masters of his circle preserved high demands for the quality of the drawing, painting accuracy, the logic of the space construction.

With Arefyev’s work the forbidden topics entered our art, opening the «dark» side of reality against the background of the magnificent front facades of classical St Petersburg. Though he had not completed his studies at the Secondary Artistic School nor got any other education, Arefyev was a virtuoso master of painting construction from the composition to the texture.

The non-official artistic movement began at the time of the «thaw» in the country’s political life, it was prepared by the cultural events such as P. Picasso’s exhibition in Moscow in 1956, the exhibition of works by contemporary artists in 1957, the series of exhibitions of foreign abstract art. In the 60s the inheritance of «The World of Art» was «officially» rehabilitated. Publications on the art of the 1920s started to appear. Critical works containing some information on the contemporary Western art started to be published. Artists learned to get illustrated foreign magazines, postcards, albums, tried to study the history of art on their own.

The end of the «thaw» for the fine arts was connected with the exhibition at the «Manezh» Exhibition Hall in Moscow in 1962 which was harshly spoken of by N. Khrushyov. The reason for this criticism were avant-gardist works presented at the exposition. This appraisal was repeated by the newspapers at once. From that time on nonconformist art had been treated as an activity similar to an ideological sabotage. Thus culture was split in two: the official, controlled and protected one, and the non-official one – marginal, rejected and suppressed.

In the middle of the 60s artistic groups started to form within the growing independent culture. There were four main tendencies in the non-official art of St Petersburg.

First of all one should mention the group of artists who united round Arefyev. The centre of this circle were V. Shagin, R. Vasmi, Sh. Swartz, V. Gromov.

A notable place in the non-official life of Leningrad was occupied by the group «Saint-Petersburg» with its leader Mikhail Shemyakin. The group was formed in 1964, its members were A. Vasilyev, O. Liagatchev, Ye. Yesaulenko, then Yu. Ivanov, A. Gennadyev. The name «Saint-Petersburg» was taken because of M. Shemyakin’s passion for Peter’s personality, for the city’s history and its unique culture. For the «Saint-Petersburg» group the art of 1910s – 20s was attractive but it didn’t excite them as much as Bosch, Brueghel, Goya did.

Shemyakin was banished from the Secondary Artistic School as well as the first generation of nonconformists, but this didn’t prevent him from becoming an educated person. In the beginning of the decade he was deeply interested in ascetic, metaphysical painting, later – in religious, ritual art.

M. Shemyakin left the country in 1971, but the group ceased existing only in 1975.

The circle of artists that can be called Sidlin’s group formed in the studio headed by O. Sidlin in the Kapranov House of Culture. In 1930 Sidlin entered the Painting Faculty of the High Artistic Institute (VKHUTEIN), he studied under A. Savinov, A. Osmerkin, K. Malevich, K. Petrov-Vodkin, but having been accused of formalism he wasn’t allowed to defend his graduation work and then turned to teaching. Sidlin taught to take painting as life, as a way to spiritual tension inside oneself. O. Sidlin’s main demand of his pupils was maximal opening of their individual creative abilities. The pupil had to paint absolutely freely and could reject the teacher’s colouristic principles and compositional ideas. Among Sidlin’s pupils were I. Ivanov, A. Basin, Ye. Goryunov, A. Manusov. An heir of the traditions of the 20s, Sidlin helped his pupils to understand the painting systems of the 20th century and also the principles of icon painting, of Byzantian painting, of his beloved Velasquez’ and Goya’s painting.

Sidlin taught to understand the inner life of the picture. His remarks helped to feel what the secret of painting’s naturalness was.

«The Home Academy» or Sterligov’s group also formed in the beginning of the 60s. It included A. Baturin, S. Spitsyn, G. Zubkov, later V. Smirnov, M. Tserush, A. Kozhin, A. Nosov, A. Gostintsev and some other artists. It members were also the art-critics Ye. Kovtun, A. Povelikhina, L. Kostina. V. Sterligov was Malevich’s pupil, he was an artist, a poet, a thinker, an heir of the traditions of the 20s. Having completed his studies at the GINKHUK, he worked as an artist at the «Detgiz» Publishing House and as a teacher. After Kirov’s assassination Sterligov, as many other people, was arrested and sentenced to five years of imprisonment in a camp. Then followed the war, contusion, demobilization.

Unfortunately many of his creative ideas haven’t been developed. His main discovery – «the bowl-cupola space» – is a totally new understanding and view of the world as of a plastic unity of the material and the spiritual forms of its being. He considered art to be the explanation of the World, demanded depth and precision of works of art.

There were various forms of work in Sterligov’s circle: conversations, going out for sketches, discussing them together, studying the principles of contemporary culture and the schools of the 20th century, first of all Cezanne’s and Matyushin’s, experiments with colour.

Sterligov’s pupils are united by their devotion to their teacher’s ideas, though each of them understands them in his own way.

Many non-official artists (V. Gerasimenko, V. Mikhaylov, A. Rapoport) considered N. P. Akimov, who taught at the Theatre Institute, to be their teacher. Akimov let his pupils do everything they wanted, but directed this activity skilfully. Akimov didn’t create his own school in the underground. But it was he who gave an impulse to the analytic approach towards painting in a way different from that of Filonov.

II

The first remarkable action of the underground in Leningrad was the exhibition at the Hermitage on March 30 – 31, 1963. M. Shemyakin, K. Kuzminskiy, M. Nikitin, V. Kravchenko, O. Liagatchev, V. Uflyand, V. Ovchinnikov took part in it. The exposition existed during a weekend and became part of the history of the non-official art under the name of «the riggers’ rebellion», because all its participants worked in the Hermitage as loaders. The exhibition caused a grave scandal which resulted in the removal of the Hermitage’s director and the discharge of all the company.

The next notable meeting of the «non-officials» with the audience took place in four years, in 1968, in the Club named after Kozitskiy. During the work at the exposition the spirit of harmony reigned, the visitors were most well-disposed. This warmth stayed for many years.

The exhibitions at V. Ovchinnikov’s studio and at the poet K. Kuzminskiy’s flat in Kustarniy, one of them continuing the other in 1971, were an important event and became the beginning of the uniting of the Leningrad «non-officials».

The impulse towards the development of the nonconformist social-artistic movement was the exhibition in Moscow known as «the bulldozer exhibition», in which some Leningrad artists also took part, and the exhibitions at the House of Culture named after Gaza (1974) and at the «Nevskiy» House of Culture (1975) that gave name to the non-official artistic activity of the 70s which became part of the underground’s history as «the gazonevskaya culture».

The exposition at the Gaza House of Culture was an act of the artists’ uniting. The actual leader during that period was Yuriy Zharkikh. Democratism, the artists’ unity, the absence of any «judges» among themselves, the agitated interest of the spectators made the exhibition a real celebration. The selection of the works for the exhibition was based on the «negative principle»: no traces of academic studying nor of following the «social ideal» were allowed. The exhibition at the «Nevskiy» was taken by the participants already as a professional event. The artists themselves selected the works according to the works’ quality.

By the beginning of the 70s the «turning-point aesthetics» which showed itself mostly clearly in the gazonevskaya culture had formed. That was a complex of various creative orientations united by their direction against the official realism and their common artistic sources. Two aesthetic centres were active in parallel in Leningrad now: the socialist realism and the non-official art.

The 60s were followed by the 70s – the time of «the stagnation» and of the most vivid manifestation of the conflict between the official and the non-official culture. The Society of Experimental Exhibitions (TEV) was created. Its aim was to struggle for the permission to hold exhibitions, to negotiate with the city’s administration. After the creation of TEV open control by the Ministry of Internal Affairs over the non-official artists was established.

The artists were being persecuted, the leader of the movement Yevgeniy Rukhin burned in his studio under unknown circumstances. Each exhibition required great efforts and long negotiations with the city’s Board of Culture which let the artists make exhibitions only in Houses of Culture in the outskirts of the city with a very limited number of participants and of the works presented. Exhibitions in private flats became a norm. In rare cases open actions were held. One of the first such actions was an attempt to show some works near the Peter and Paul Fortress on the 30th of May, 1976 devoted to the memory of Ye. Rukhin. There were some exhibitions held directly in the streets. The underground’s actions were always put a stop to at once and resulted in conflicts with the militia, in arrests, – that’s why the preparing of the exhibitions and the ways of holding them were gradually acquiring an increasingly partisan character.

Among the groups of the 70s one should mention «Alef» formed in 1975 and having united twelve Jewish artists of Leningrad. The organizer and inspirer of the group was Ye. Abezgauz. The exhibitions of «Alef» were prepared secretly. The group existed for about two years. Two exhibitions took place during that time.

New artistic groups were appearing uniting young authors who from the first days of their being engaged in art were familiar with the names and works of the artists who had been prohibited in the 60s, to say nothing of the 50s.

In 1976 – 77 the «Letopis» («Chronicle») group was formed, which existed until 1981. Its members were Ye. Figurina, T. Novikov, M. Goroshko and other authors.

The fist exhibition of the «Letopis» group – in a private flat – took place in the autumn of 1977. In May of the next year the members of the group tried to organize an exhibition more available to the audience at the House of the People’s Creative Work in Rubinstein Street. Having got a refusal, the artists placed their paintings directly in the street near the church of Kirill and Mefodiy. The exhibition near the church was joined by the artists of the «Olipiy» group, which fact later allowed to call this new unity «The Kirill and Mefodiy Group». The next exhibition took place on the shore of the Finnish bay. Then several exhibitions in private flats took place. Only in May of 1979 the group managed to make an exposition at the House of Creative Work.

III

The stiff situation of the 70s, which was the reason why in 1977 – 78 the leaders of the non-official movement left the country, put an end to the romantic period in the underground’s history. The Ministry of Internal Affairs became seriously interested in the artists, and the city’s administration worked out some subtle methods of struggle against nonconformism. Now the Board of Culture didn’t refuse to let the artists organize exhibitions, but made it a condition that not more than four or five authors should show their works at the same time. Only small, private-like exhibitions in the foyers of cinemas and clubs in the outskirts of the city were allowed.

The Society of Leningrad Artists that took TEV’s place in 1978 didn’t manage to show its worth in the stiff conditions of the second half of the 70s.

It became clear that dialogue with the cultural administration of the city was necessary. The artists wrote a letter to Moscow, to the Department of Culture at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, addressed to the Head of the Department V. F. Shauro. The letter was signed by seventy-nine artists.

They proposed to consider «the attitude of the Main Board of Culture of Leningrad and of the Union of Artists towards the artistic inheritance of the Russian artists of the beginning of the century and the Soviet masters of fine arts of the first decade after the October revolution; the attitude of the Union of Artists towards the creative search in the contemporary art; the attitude of the city’s authorities towards the artists who are not members of the Leningrad Department of the Union of Artists».

The artists’ letter once again draws one’s attention to the peculiarity of our underground: it struggled not for some special or specific conditions but for natural human and professional rights, for an opportunity simply to work.

In half a year, as an answer to their circumstantial and detailed appeal the non-official artists got a note occupying less than one page which said that the Ministry of Culture could agree neither with the artists’ opinion concerning the critical condition of the fine arts in Leningrad nor with the «non-officials»‘ estimation of their work as of a contribution to the country’s professional artistic culture. It was recommended that the artists should take part in exhibitions by amateur authors. This point of view, well known to the artists, meant a direction towards the decay of the non-official movement. So they could count only on their own forces.

On November 14 – 17, 1981, before the answer from Moscow was received, the famous private-flat exhibition on Bronnitskaya Street had taken place. In order to hold the exhibition without the permission from the authorities, which prohibited big non-official expositions, the artists had to work out a whole programme for preparing the exhibition based on the experience they possessed of.

That exhibition was visited by 2000 people, which was much more than it had been expected.

That was the last big private-flat exposition of the non-official artists, and it finished the more than twenty years’ history of the «home» vernissages.

During the period of the exhibition’s preparation and work the idea of TEII (The Society of Experimental Fine Arts) was born. Then the Charter of the Society was worked out and accepted. The main areas of the Society’s work were exhibitions, organizing and discussing them; searching for new forms of working with the spectators with the aim of forming the non-official artists’ own audience; taking part in the issuing of non-official literary works (first of all – in the «Chasy» («The Clock») magazine) with the Society’s reports and the analysis of its activity; and, finally, one of the main spheres was the struggle for the official acknowledgement of the TEII, for its right for independent creative activity and for social guarantees for the non-official artists. The TEII had no juridical status, but it organized exhibitions.

In September of 1980 an exhibition by fifteen artists took place at the Kirov House of Culture including paintings, drawings and sculpture, avant-gardist as well as traditional. The exposition was very convincing and balanced, though the representatives of the Main Board of Culture had taken off part of the works. Talented authors V. Shagin and D. Shagin, A. Manusov, I. Kirillova, V. Levitin, G. Zubkov, I. Tserush, G. Ustyugov took part in the exhibition..

The «Olympic» exhibition organized by the Board of Culture shortly before the sports Olympiad in Moscow opened in summer in 1980 at the Leningrad Palace of Youth. It was the first time that the «non-officials» and the members of the Leningrad Department of the Union of Artists took part in one exposition together.

In September, 1981, at the Kirov House of Culture an exhibition of «neutron landscape» took place. The spectators got acquainted with the «geological landscape» by T. Ulanova, the «sterile landscape» by V. Valran, the «gothic fantasies» by Ye. Musalin and Yu. Bogun.

IV

The first real TEII’s action was the October (October 12 – November 5) exhibition at the Kirov House of Culture. 39 people took part in it, 300 works were presented. There were twelve (less than one third of the whole number of the artists) older nonconformists who had gone through the «gazonevskoye» test: V. Afonichev, G. Bogomolov, L. Bolmat, V. Gerasimenko, V. Goos, A. Gurevich, N. Zhilina, I. Ivanov, A. Manusov, V. Mikhaylov, Yu. Petrochenkov, G. Ustygov. About forty thousand people visited the exhibition.

Stable but still complicated relations between the TEII and the Main Board of Culture were established. But there was still no juridical acknowledgement of the Society.

At the «Exhibition of the Forty-Seven» which took place in August of 1983 works not only by the TEII’s members but also by some official authors were presented.

An exhibition by the group «The Fifth Quarter», which had been created inside the structure of the TEII, took place on December 10 – January 10 at the House of Scientists in Lesnoye. The vernissage was interesting, it was accompanied by Kuryokhin’s jazz group.

V

The Society’s activity from the moment of its founding was split in two directions. The first was working with the artists and the spectators, organizing exhibitions and discussing them. The second was struggling for the official acknowledgement of the TEII.

On March 27 – April 20, 1984 another exhibition by the Society took place at the Leningrad Palace of Youth. The styles were various involving all the known traditions, from the academic to the primitivist ones.

The Society’s exhibition «The Facets of Portrait», planned for September – October of 1984, was opened very late and and at the cost of serious concessions to the Main Board of Culture.

After the «The Facets of Portrait» exhibition it was «recommended» that the Society’s Council should work at the next exhibitions together with the Board of Culture. The TEII’s Council refused to do it. The answer was that the artists were deprived of big exhibitions. Only group exhibitions remained, and the artists were already thinking of returning to the well-tried practice of the private-flat exhibitions.

But after a long struggle they managed to hold an exhibition at the Kirov House of Culture from December 24, 1985 until January 20, 1986 in which 82 artists took part.

During the exhibition’s work the TEII’s Council wrote a project of an open letter addressed to the XXVII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and to M. S. Gorbachyov, which was signed by 79 members of the TEII. On the 4th of February the letter was given in to the reception room of the Party’s Central Commitee, to the editorial offices of the «Pravda» («Truth») and «Sovetskaya Kultura» («The Soviet Culture») newspapers.

The letter spoke of the problems of the contemporary non-official art and those problems’ reasons; it described the activity of the Society; it raised the question of the necessity of state support of the Society and suggested some concrete measures.

The opening of the spring exhibition was planned for the 15th of May. 500 works by artists from twelve cities of the country were accepted for the exposition.

But the administration of the Palace of Youth and then the city’s Exhibition Commission selected the works for the exhibition anew, and the result of this was that 44 works were rejected. The TEII’s efforts to find a compromise achieved no success. Then all the artists, not willing to open the exhibition without the 17 rejected authors, showing their protest, without arranging it, took off their works – they took away the whole exposition which had been quite ready.

The artists considered the upsetting of their spring exhibition to be a «punishment» for their letter to the Congress.

Before the opening of the next exhibition at one of the pavilions of the Exhibition Complex in Gavan on the 14th of January, 1987 the city’s Exhibition Commission for the first time accepted all the works, though many of them had been categorically rejected by the spring exhibition’s Commission. This was how the artists felt the wind of «perestroyka». 164 artists (of which only 98 were TEII members) showed their works. From that moment on an obvious change of the situation became visible. Besides this big exhibition an exhibition by the «Ostrov» («Island») group at the Tsyurupa House of Culture and the exhibition «About Our Younger Brothers» at Liteyniy, 57 took place in January – February.

At the exhibition of the non-official art which opened at the Leningrad Palace of Youth on the 20th of May a reception of the representatives of American museums and the American artist Jimmy Wyatt took place. The meeting was shot by the BBC and became part of a film which was later shown in America. In a month a delegation of artists and teachers of artistic schools of the Federative Republic of Germany visited the same exhibition. That was the first exposition without problems. It was the first time that it had been allowed to put the full name of the TEII on the exhibition’s poster.

In the autumn of 1987 the «Mitki» group held an exhibition at the University in Peterhof, and two TEII’s exhibitions took place in Moscow. The first publication about the Society appeared in the central press, in the «Yunost» («Youth») magazine (Nr. 2, 1988). In the end of 1987 the exhibitions were already following each other closely. On December 9 a personal exhibition by B. Koshelokhov opened at Liteyniy, 57, on December 10 the drawings exhibition «Handwriting» began its work at the Palace of Youth. On December 11 a common Society’s exhibition took place at the Exhibition Hall in the district of Okhta.

In December, 1987 – January, 1988 an exhibition by twelve members of the Society in the museum of Narva together with the Estonian artists and the exhibition of «the seven» in Kaliningrad took place. In February the «Ostrov» group showed its works at the Tsyurupa House of Culture. At the same time an exhibition by twenty-one artists was prepared for the American Gallery «Route One» in Point-Reyes-Station, California. That was the first exhibition by the Society held abroad.

Among the exhibitions of the year «The Aspects of Abstractionism» at the Palace of Youth was especially remarkable. It provided material for the book-treatise with the same title by the artist A. Dmitriyev.

But the main event of the year was the big common exposition by the Leningrad Department of the Union of Artists and the Society of Experimental Fine Arts (TEII), called «Contemporary Leningrad», which opened at the «Manezh» on December 16, 1988 and can be considered to have put an end to the history of the non-official art. This exhibition’s success may be compared only to the success of the first «non-officials»‘ actions in 1974 and 1975. With the democratic changes in the country the ban on the exhibitions by the non-union artists was abolished, and consequently the underground as a social phenomenon ceased to exist.

The work of the former underground at that time concentrates mostly around several artistic positions: spontaneously-metaphysical, grotesquely-realistic, conceptual, post-modernistic, analytical, constituting grotesquely-epic, allegoric realism («Ostrov»).