“Amazonki” is an exquisite selection of works by women artists of the Russian Avant-Garde. The exhibition features some of the most remarkable women artists of the Russian Avant-Garde such as Maria and Xenia Ender, Natalia Goncharova, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Nadezhda Udaltsova, and Varvara Stepanova.

The works comprise both visual and applied forms of art, from graphic works and theater designs to decorative projects.

“Amazonki” is the Russian word for the mythological “Amazons,” and it was first applied to the female Russian Avant-Garde artists by the Cubo-futurist poet Benedikt Livshits, who described them as “real Amazons, Scythian riders.”

These pioneering women artists were extremely influential in the world of the Avant-Garde and highly significant in defining modernism as a whole.

There was a remarkable boom in women’s creativity in early-20th century Russia, where the rapid modernization of society changed the status of the female artist and marked the beginning of women’s integration into cultural areas that were formerly the preserve of men only.

Never before in the history of Western art had women played such an important role in the formation of new art movements or the redefining and reconfiguration of cultural spaces.

Their influence can be clearly seen throughout the 20th Century. “Amazonki” thus continues with a separate exhibition of the preeminent female artist of Russian origin in the US: Louise Nevelson.

Though the “Amazons” were distinguished by their tremendous energy and a great force of will, they at no time constituted a single, uniform group formed through a common support of “feminist” ideas.

Possessing a bright talent, each offered her own vision and direction to the development of Avant-Garde art, playing a vital role in larger artistic circles, where they were as individualistic, productive and exceptional as their male colleagues such as Kazimir Malevich, Mikhail Larionov and Alexander Rodchenko.

Images: installation view, “Amazonki”, Galerie Gmurzynska, 2019, all images courtesy of Galerie Gmurzynska.

AMAZONKI
GALERIE GMURZYNSKA
ZURICH
June 8 – September 8, 2019
gmurzynska.com

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