Russian Avant-Garde Theatre

The two decades between 1913 and 1933 saw an unprecedented boom in Russian theatre culture, ignited by the avant-garde movement sweeping through the art world. As artistic, literary and musical traditions underwent a shattering transformation against the backdrop of the First World War and the Russian Revolutions, artists from many different creative disciplines converged on Russian theatre to produce a remarkable flowering of radical, visionary and experimental design for performance. Such artists included Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko, Sergei Eisenstein, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexandra Exter, El Lissitzky, Liubov Popova and Varvara Stepanova. This book, published alongside a major exhibition at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, in association with the Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum in Moscow, opens with nine essays by experts from Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Then follows over 150 sumptuously reproduced, full-colour set and costume designs from leading artists and designers of the period, many of which have never been published before. Edited by John E. Bowlt, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Southern California, the result is an astonishing record of a period of creative innovation that redefined not only what was possible in theatre and the avant-garde, but in wider artistic practices too. It will be of interest both to theatregoers and art historians, as well as current and future designers seeking inspiration for their own work.