Aleksandr Deineka (1899-1969) : an avant-garde for the proletariat

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Statements from the Catalogue of 

the “First Discussional Exhibition 

of the Active Revolutionary Art 

Associations” 

1924

D28

CONCRETISTS

I. 

CONCRETENESS IS THE OBJECT IN ITSELF.

II.  CONCRETENESS IS THE SUM OF EXPERIENCE.

III.  CONCRETENESS IS FORM.

Preconditions for objects:

1. Contemporaneity

2.  Clarity of objective

3.  Accuracy of execution

Participants in the group: Petr Vil’iams, Boris Volkov, Konstantin Vialov, Vladimir 

Liushin, Iurii Merkulov (18 diff erent items exhibited)

METHOD (The Projectionists)

OUR PRIMARY SLOGANS 

1.

Industrial production regulates social attitudes.

2.

1, 2, or 100 artists cannot organize the environment—ONLY INDUSTRIAL 

production can.

3.

The artist is the inventor of new systems of objects and works with objective 

meaning.

4.

Painting and volumetrical constructions are the most convincing means of 

expressing the (PROJECTION) METHOD of organizing materials.

4a. 

It is essential and quite opportune to be actively engaged in art.

5.

The artist is not the producer of consumer objects (cupboard, picture), but the 

(PROJECTION) METHOD of organizing materials.

5a. 

MILLIONS OF PRODUCERS WILL BE MAKING NORMALIZED OBJECTS FOR 

EVERYDAY LIFE.

6.

Art is the science of an objective system of organizing materials.

7.

Every organization is materialized through METHOD.

Participants in the group: S. Luchishkin, S. B. Nikritin, M. Plaksin, Kliment Red’ko, N. 

Triaskin, A. Tyshler (90 various works exhibited: Luchishkin’s “analytical painting,” 

Nikritin’s “tectonic researches” [“drafts”], painting, maquettes, models, drawings)

THE FIRST WORKING GROUP OF CONSTRUCTIVISTS

ON THE EXHIBITED WORKS

1. 

By taking part in this exhibition, the Constructivists are not rejecting the ba-

sic tenets of revolutionary constructivism, which defends the FACTUAL RATIO-

NALIZATION OF ARTISTIC LABOR as opposed to the now dominant cultivation of 

the artistic creation of idealistic art.

By appearing in this instance beneath the slogan “ASSOCIATIONS OF ACTIVE 

REVOLUTIONARY ART,” the Constructivists are pursuing only agitational aims: to 

contribute objects they have made and thereby to participate in the demonstra-

tive discussion between the new groups and associations that have arisen within 

a proletarian society.

This does not mean that we are turning back to art, or that we are retreating from 

those positions that the First Working Group of Constructivists occupied when, 

as early as 1920, they shouted forth the slogan “WE DECLARE IMPLACABLE WAR 

ON ART.”

2.  The Constructivists’ rationalization of artistic labor has nothing in common 

with the travails of art makers who are striving, as it were, to “socialize” the flow-

ering branches of art and to compel the latter to APPLY ITSELF to contemporary 

social reality.

In rationalizing artistic labor, the Constructivists put into practice—not in verbal, 

but in concrete terms—the real qualifications of the OBJECT: they are raising its 

quality, establishing its social role, and organizing its forms in an organic relation-

ship with its utilitarian meaning and objective.

The Constructivists are putting into practice this rationalization of artistic labor by 

means of material labor—that labor in which the workers themselves are directly 

involved.

The Constructivists are convinced that, with the growing influence of the mate-

rialist world view, the so-called “spiritual” life of society, the emotional qualities 

of people can no longer be cemented by abstract categories of metaphysical 

beauty and by the mystical intrigues of a spirit soaring above society.

The Constructivists assert that all art makers without exception are engaged in 

these intrigues, and no matter what vestments of realistic or naturalistic art they 

are invested in, they cannot escape essentially from the magic circle of aesthetic 

conjuring tricks.

But by applying conscious reason to life, our new young proletarian society lives 

also by the only concrete values of social construction and by clear objectives.

While constructing, while pursuing these aims NOT ONLY FOR ITSELF, BUT ALSO 

THROUGH ITSELF, our society can advance only by concretizing, only by realizing 

the vital acts of our modern day.

And this is our reality, our life. Ideologically, as it were, consciously, we have ex-

tirpated yesterday, but in practical and formal terms we have not yet mastered 

today’s reality.

We do not sentimentalize objects; that is why we do not sing about objects in 

poetry. But we have the will to construct objects; that is why we are developing 

and training our ability to make objects.

3.  At the “First Discussional Exhibition of Associations of New Groups of Artistic 

Labor,” the Constructivists are showing only certain aspects of their production:

I. 

Typographical construction of the printed surface

II.  Volumetrical objects (the construction of an armature for everyday life)

III.  Industrial and special clothing

IV. Children’s 

books

The First Working Group of Constructivists consists of a number of productional 

cells.

Of those not represented, mention should be made of the productional cell “Kino-

fot” (cinematography and photography), the productional cell of material con-

structions, and the productional cell “Mass Action.”

The First Working Group of Constructivists states that all other groups that call 

themselves constructivists, such as the “Constructivist Poets,”

5

 the “Constructiv-

ists of the Chamber Theater,”

6

 the “Constructivists of the Meierkhol’d Theater,”

7

 

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the “Lef Constructivists,” the “TsIT Constructivists,”

8

 etc., are, from this group’s 

point of view, PSEUDO-CONSTRUCTIVISTS and are engaged in merely making art.

The First Working Group of Constructivists

a.  The FWGC productional cell for an armature for everyday life:

 

Grigorii Miller, L. Sanina and Aleksei Gan

b.  The FWGC productional cell for children’s books:

 

Olga and Galina Chichagova and N. G. Smirnov

c.  The FWGC productional cell for industrial and special clothing:

 

A. Miroliubova, L. Sanina and Grigorii Miller

d.  The FWGC productional cell for typographical production:

Aleksei Gan and Gr. Miller

 

THE FIRST WORKING ORGANIZATION OF ARTISTS

BASIC TENETS

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

1. 

The First Working Organization of Artists is striving to make the artist a so-

cially indispensable element of modern life.

2.  By organizing our personal and professional qualities, we organize the pro-

duction of artistic values as part of the normal relationship between the artist and 

life.

3.  By personal qualities we mean that spiritual, cultural level of consciousness 

that is oriented toward the development of new social forms.

4.  By professional qualities we mean that level of artistic culture and artistic 

consciousness that, while being closely bound up with contemporaneity, is ori-

ented toward the development of new forms in art.

5.  Through our practical and cultural activity we are organizing our psychology 

in accordance with the basic principles of our organization

Participants in the group: Grigorii Aleksandrov, Petr Zhukov, Aram Vanetsian, 

Mikhail Sapegin, Ivan Korolev, Konstantin Loginov, Nikolai Men’shutin, Aleksei 

Rudnev, Aleksandr Stepanov, Ivan Iakovlev, N. Prusakov (models, maquettes of 

architectural constructions and monuments, montages, and paintings)

The exhibition opened in the Higher Arts and Technical Studios (VKhUTEMAS), Moscow, 

on May 11, 1924 and comprised eight sections, of which four advanced independent dec-

larations. Those without declarations were: the Byt (Everyday Life) group, consisting of 

the artists Ivan Pankov and Konstantin Parkhomenko; the Association of Three—Aleksandr 

Deineka, Andrei Goncharov, and Iurii Pimenov; a group called the Constructivists—includ-

ing Konstantin Medunetskii and the Stenberg brothers; and a small one-man show of the 

sculptor Iosif Chaikov. Most of the contributors were young and had recently graduated 

from the new art schools, and some of them, e.g., Deineka, Goncharov, Pimenov, Konstan-

tin Vialov and Pet’r Vil’iams, became founding members of the Society of Easel Painters 

(OST, see p. 359) at the beginning of 1925.

Despite their specific titles, there was little diff erence between the concretists and the 

projectionists, both of whom favored easel painting and not, as their declarations would 

imply, applied art. The canvases that they presented were, however, highly imaginative 

and subjective, betraying the influence of German expressionism and even surrealistic ten-

dencies—particularly in the work of Goncharov, Sergei Luchishkin, Aleksandr Tyshler and 

Vil’iams. Most members of the seventh section, the First Working Organization of Artists, 

shortly disappeared from the art scene, although Nikolai Prusakov (formerly a member of 

the Society of Young Artists, OBMOKhU) later achieved a reputation as a book and poster 

designer.

The First Working Group of Constructivists was founded in December 1920,

1

 and its 

declaration quoted here repeated some of the ideas in its initial so-called “Productivist” 

manifesto

2

 and in Gan’s book.

According to one source,

3

 Lissitzky took the program of the First Working Group with 

him when he went to Germany in 1921, thus disseminating constructivist ideas in the West; 

some Western observers, including Hans Richter, even acknowledged that constructiv-

ism had first arisen in Russia.

4

 The First Working Group was not fully represented at this 

exhibition, which did not include the group’s productional cell Mass Action and the Kinofot 

(cinematography and photography) cell. Of the First Working Group represented at this 

exhibition, the Chichagova sisters, Grigorii Miller and Aleksandra Miroliubova achieved 

some recognition in later years, contributing bookplate and other small graphic designs 

to exhibitions.

Essentially, the exhibition acted as a junction of artistic interests: easel art versus indus-

trial art. The exhibition’s title indicated also the quandary in which many artists were finding 

themselves: the word “discussional” (

diskussionyi) has the meaning in Russian not only of 

“concerned with discussion or debate,” but also of “open to question, debatable.”

The texts of these pieces are from the catalogue of 

I-aia Diskussionaiaa vystavka 

ob”edinenii aktivnogo revolyutsionnogo iskusstva (Moscow, 1924). The whole catalogue is 

reprinted in 

Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let. The catalogue name list is reprinted in Vystavki 

sovetskogo izobrazitel’nogo iskusstva,

9

 and extracts from the Constructivist declaration to-

gether with some comments are in “Iz istorii sovetskoi arkhitektury, 1926–1932.”

10

 A detailed 

review of the exhibition is in 

Pechat’ i revoliutsiia 4 (Moscow, 1924): 120–29.

— JB

1.  Judging by Gan’s 

Konstruktivizm, p. 3; by an announcement in Ermitazh 13 (Moscow, 1922), 3; and by the group’s 

own statement in the catalogue to this exhibition, 14.

2. See 

Naum 

Gabo, 

Gabo: Constructions, Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings (London: Lund Humphries; 

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), 153.

3.  V. Khazanova, “Sovetskaia arkhitektura pervykh let Oktiabria 1917–1925 gg.” (Moscow, 1970), 196.

4. Ibid.

5.  The constructivist poets such as Vera Inber, Il’ia Sel’vinskii and Kornelii Zelinkskii were members of the so-called 

Literary Center of the Constructivists (LTsK), founded in Moscow in 1924; see K. Zelinkskii and I. Sel’vinskii, eds., 

Gosplan literaturyi. Sbornik Literaturnogo tsentra konstruktivistov (L.Ts.K.) (Moscow, 1924). A translation of their 

manifesto appears in Stephen Bann, ed., 

The Constructivist Tradition (New York: Viking, 1974), 123–27.

6.  Constructivists of the Chamber Theater (Aleksandr Tairov’s Kamernyi teatr) included Aleksandra Ekster, the Sten-

berg brothers, Aleksandr Vesnin, and Georgii Iakulov; see A. Efros, 

Kamernyi teatr i ego khudozhniki. 1914–1934 

(Moscow, 1934)].

7.  Constructivists who worked for Vsevelod Meierkhol’d’s State Higher Theater Workshop in Moscow included 

Liubov Popova and Varvara Stepanova; as director of the Workshop, Meierkhol’d developed his constructivist 

theory of so-called biomechanics. For details see Edward Braun, trans. and ed., 

Meyerhold on Theatre (New York: 

Hill and Wang; London: Methuen, 1969), 183–204; Huntly Carter, 

The New Spirit in the Russian Theatre, 1917–1928 

(London: Brentano’s, 1929), 70; V. Meierkhol’d, 

Stat’I, pis’ma, rechi, besedy, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1968), vol. 2, 486–89.

8.  The Central Institute of Labor (TsIT), run by Aleksei Gastev in Moscow, acted as a laboratory for the analysis of the 

“rhythmic rotation of work” and aspired to create a machine man, an artist of labor. Among the institute’s mem-

bers were the critic Viktor Pertsov and the artist Aleksandr Tyshler; see René Fueloep-Miller, 

The Mind and Face of 

Bolshevism: An Examination of Cultural Life in Soviet Russia (London and New York: Putnam, 1928; rev. ed. New 

York: Harper, 1965), 206–14.

9. 

Vystavki sovetskogo izobrazitel’nogog iskusstva, vol. 1, 1917–32 (Moscow, 1965), 132.

10.  V. Khazanova, comp., “Iz istorii sovetskoi arkhitektury, 1926–1932,” 

Dokumenty I materialy (Moscow, 1970), 66.

Originally published in Russian as 

I-aia Diskussionaia vystavka ob”edinenii aktivnogo revoliutsionnogo iskusstva, exh. 

cat. (Moscow, 1924). The whole catalogue is reprinted in 

Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let, ed. Ivan Matsa (Moscow-

Leningrad, 1933), 313–18, from which this translation is made. For a partial translation into German see 

Zwischen 

Revolutionskunst und Sozialistischen Realismus: Dokumente und Kommentare. Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion 

von 1917 bis 1934, ed. Hubertus Gassner and Eckhardt Gillen (Cologne: DuMont, 1979), 143–45.

The version here has been reproduced by permission, with minor changes, from “Statements from the Catalogue 

of the ‘First Discussional Exhibition of Associations of Active Revolutionary Art’,” in 

Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: 

Theory and Criticism 1902–1934, ed. and trans. John E. Bowlt, rev. and enlarged ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 

1988), 237–43.

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358

The Artistic Life of Moscow

1924

D29

Aleksei Fedorov-Davydov

. . . Following this brief overview, we can now set about examining the two recent 

exhibitions, one under the “cultural patronage of the VKhUTEMAS” and the “First 

Discussional Exhibition,” which from our viewpoint are the most interesting. All 

the exhibitions that we wrote about in the last review and at the start of this one 

consist essentially of yesterday’s art and have lived out their days. In contrast, 

these exhibitions that feature the artistic youth of VKhUTEMAS are for us the first 

flashes of what, like it or not, will be the art of tomorrow. This forces them to be 

treated very seriously and requires some predictions about the future based upon 

analysis of the present works. We always imagine this future, on the one hand, as 

the close connection of art with production, as the entry of art into production 

and the creation there of new aesthetic values and, on the other hand,  as the 

elaboration of some sort of new art, an art of the new post-revolutionary Russia. 

Both tendencies are displayed in startling definition in these two exhibitions of 

the VKhUTEMAS students . . . 

Let’s proceed to the First Discussional Exhibition. It really was discussional, not 

only because eight completely separate groups participated, but also because 

assessment of its works as seedlings of the future art can be and is quite diff erent 

. . .

On the other hand, if we take not the constructivists but genuine painters, then in 

general they are a joyous phenomenon and allow us to consider the possibilities 

of an entirely new future art. These are the groups “Everyday Life,” “The Asso-

ciation of Three” and in part “The Concretivists.” Their painting has the following 

characteristics: realism, subject matter, a distinctive “urban expressionism,” and 

a depth of formal explorations . . . Even more of this expressionism, together with 

the most authentic realism, appears in the work of the “Group of Three.” It really is 

a quite homogenous group, so it is possible to discuss all its members at the same 

time. Their paintings are full of movement, not a single figure rests, each form is 

shown unfolding. This is a very characteristic trait of urbanism. 

At a cursive glance, every three-dimensional object appears to unfold, displaying 

all its sides in a single view and at the same time remaining a definite flat silhou-

ette in the fleetingness of existence. The artists achieved this by juxtaposition, 

often in a single figure and sometimes in several, placing side-by-side silhouettes 

and three-dimensional forms modeled with chiaroscuro, which is especially evi-

dent in the works of Pimenov. Goncharov, in turn, provides other features of ex-

pressionist urbanism: an instantaneous grasp of the nature of a thing through the 

omission of details. In a painting representing a girl, he omitted one hand from 

her entirely, and despite this yet truly because of it, the realistic dynamism of the 

scene is extraordinarily convincing. 

The third one of them, Deineka, exhibited the etching Two Figures, which is, in fact, 

their painterly treatise. It is a study of the unfolding of spatial forms on a plane. 

Deineka’s oils in general have the same characteristics of the other two. In all of 

them is present the tangible influence of Favorskii, which could frighten some, 

just as their expressionism could frighten. However, it would be highly undialec-

tical to think that this or that influence could be only negative and that aspects 

of the new art could not arise from such influences. Without insisting that these 

three young artists are prophets of the future, we just want to say that in their 

work it is possible to glimpse the characteristics of the future. And we could call 

it expressionist realism. It is unquestionable that the new painting will inevitably 

be realistic, simple, clear, and void of all mysticism. Without doubt, it will also be 

deeply urban in its character, and it will stem from the positive side of expression-

ism. Dispensing with mysticism, it takes its dynamism, its maximum of impression

with a minimum of means—for example, as it is now expressed in the work of 

[George] Grosz. The other positive feature of these artists we consider the inten-

sification of their formal explorations. No matter that it came from Favorskii. 

We think negatively about the formalism of the leftists, because these explora-

tions are purely formal, free of all ideology, all philosophy of exploration. This is 

not what we see among the youth. Their formal explorations originate from a new 

understanding of the object and its spatial functions. When they paint pictures, 

their first thought is to interpret that surrounding the person in a new way. In ad-

dition, this interpretation contains its own philosophy and a great artistic task. 

The revolutionary character of the artist is not in his unfailing wish to represent 

the worker with his hammer and scorn for non-revolutionary subjects, but in that 

he sees these old subjects in a new way, perceives and communicates them in a 

new way. 

Our proletarian youth are seized by an irrepressible passion for learning. The thirst 

for knowledge, for positivism, seems to never have been as great as it is now. 

The materialism of thinking is expressed in the striving to rationalize everything. 

Sometimes this runs to extremes, as in the “Projectionists” at this same exhibition, 

whose paintings resemble more geometric drafts, but in the catalogue is written: 

“art is the science of an objective system of organizing materials.”

But in the best of their manifestations these conceptual-formal explorations de-

serve the most serious attention and suggest an interesting historical analogy 

with the Italian Quattrocento, the artists of which expressed the new ideology of 

the new class namely in their formal explorations (perspective, foreshortening, 

etc.) but not in the subject, which in essence remained old.

The new artistic youth is just beginning to learn the new perception of the world—

a realist, materialist perception. Therefore, it is entirely natural that for the present 

they are interested only in individual objects, only, so to speak, with still life (in the 

broad sense of the word). But when they overcome this, when they learn anew how 

to perceive and interpret objects, they, undoubtedly, will also switch over to more 

diff icult social and psychological subject matter.

1

 No matter how desirable it is to-

day for us to have a painting that would reflect the revolution, we need to display 

significant caution in these demands, otherwise we risk obtaining, so to speak,

a surrogate of revolution. In fact, this exhibition confirms this assertion. In it were 

not bad works, so to speak, of a painterly “productive” character, serving the 

tasks of the moment. For instance, the poster-like character of P. Vil’iams’ 

Mon-

tage O.D.V.F. and Merkulov’s Signboard for the First Cavalry School and the badge 

for the same. But it is interesting that when that same Merkulov tried to serve the 

revolution not in a “productive” way, he reflects it in grand art creating such a 

thoroughly false work as 

Red Army Cavalry. Similarly false is Vialov’s painting The 

Militiaman. They are false, as while they are hurrah-patriotic, to what extent are 

they “revolutionary”? Judge for yourself.

Of course, all of these are highly debatable questions, and only the true reality of 

the future will decide them. For the present, we may only state this pleasant fact, 

that the work of our artistic youth in the area of both production art and in the 

area of pure painting gives definite hope for a happy departure from the crisis of 

the art of our days . . .

1.  These formal searches, of course, are in principle not those of formalism in its old understanding. Back then, it 

developed breaking away from life, whereas here the striving to acquire a new language is for the expression of 

the new ideology.

Originally published in Russian as Aleksei Fedorov-Davydov, “Khudozhestvennaia zhizn’ Moskvy,” 

Pechat’ i revoliutsiia 

4 (July-August, 1924): 120–29. For a German translation see 

Zwischen Revolutionskunst und Sozialistischen Realis-

mus: Dokumente und Kommentare. Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917 bis 1934, ed. Hubertus Gassner and 

Eckhardt Gillen (Cologne: DuMont, 1979), 339–42. 

The version here has been translated from the Russian original by Erika Wolf.

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