Jack of Diamonds. Emanations of isms

For the first time in Voronezh, the Platonov Festival presents an exhibition of works by the artists of the "Jack of Diamonds", a creative association that began the history of the Russian avant-garde.

The first exhibition of the "Jack of Diamonds" took place in December 1910 - January 1911 and, as an experimental platform, brought together artists of different aesthetic views. Konchalovsky later recalled: "All of us were united then [in 1910] by the need to launch an attack against the old painting." With their art, the "Jack of Diamonds" participants heralded the change of cultural eras. They were the first to notice the chasm between modern life and the old, classical culture, "letting in" the roar of the streets, the upbeat harshness of the language of shop signs and cheap trays, and straightforward booth humor into art. Neo-primitivism, in the direction of which the "Jack of Diamonds" initially developed, actively rethought the visual culture of cities and villages, archaic pictorial traditions.

Starting from 1912-1914, the "Jack of Diamonds" gradually moved away from primitivist aspirations. Larionov and Goncharova switched to rayonism, and in 1912 they completely left the association. Konchalovsky, Mashkov, Falk and Kuprin, they all go deeper and deeper into easel work, many of them copying the Sezanist tradition. It is no coincidence that the "Jack of Diamonds" participants received a succinct definition the "Russian sezanists" from A. Benois, a subtle art critic. Cezanne's method is a method of pictorial analysis; each of his works, seemingly, even the most insignificant one, reveals the plastic homogeneity of the world. Russia turned out to be the most sensitive to Cezanne's discoveries; even decades later Sezanne's reminiscences echoed in the work of artists who sought to preserve the picturesque beginning and professional culture in their work. They kept returning to the art of Cezanne whenever the problem of finding the expressiveness of form without "realistic" visualization and narrative of the plot arose, when it was necessary for the painting to find its own universal language for expressing large entities.

As an organization, the "Jack of Diamonds" ceased to exist in 1917. But the leaders of the group launched an active pedagogical activity, and over the next fifteen years they themselves and their numerous students created a number of societies that largely determined the atmosphere in Russian painting of the 1920s: the "Moscow Painters" (1924-25), the "Genesis" (1921-30), the "Wing" (1926-28), the Society of Moscow Artists (1927-32).

The exhibition of the Platonov festival the "Jack of Diamonds. Emanation of isms" unites the works from the collections of seven Russian museums - the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Saratov State Art Museum named after A. Radishchev, the Kursk State Art Gallery named after A. Deineka, the Ryazan State Regional Art Museum named after I. Pozhalostin, the Tula Regional Art Museum, the Yaroslavl Art Museum. The exposition includes the works by M. Larionov, N. Goncharova, A. Lentulov, "sezanists" I. Mashkov, P. Konchalovsky, A. Kuprin, abstractionists V. Kandinsky, A. Exter, a suprematist I. Klyun – the artists, who wrote one of the brightest pages in the history of the Russian art. The most important problem for them was the preservation of the inner freedom of creativity, the possibility of artistic expression in completely unfree conditions. The fate had it in different ways for the first avant-garde artists: from oblivion to emigration, from painful compromises to the "employment ban". The "Jack of Diamonds" members tried to comprehended the structure of the world in their creations, and the tragedy of history was reflected in their destinies.