A comprehensive retrospective of Aristarkh
Lentulov, one of the most important figures
in the Russian avant-garde movement,
opened at the Bakhrushin State Central
Theater Museum a week ago. Devoted to the
artist’s 135th anniversary, it encompasses works
from all periods of his life, from the turn of the
century to the 1940s.
The exhibition presents 250 artworks
from 20 museums around Russia and 11
private collections, including the artist’s
great grandson Fyodor Lentulov. It’s the first
exhibition of Lentulov’s work of this scale in
30 years, and it was organized in record time:
just four months and two weeks.
The title of the exhibition, “MysteryBouffe,”
refers to the play by Russian avantgarde
poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The author
himself called it “the revolutionary road”
and set the tone for much of post-1917 art.
Although Lentulov did not design the stage
sets (they were developed by Suprematist
avatar Kazimir Malevich), the idea of a “mystery-bouffe”
or comic opera reflects his ideas
about art. Mayakovsky used to say that what
he did with literature, Lentulov did with art.
Born into a poor priest’s family in a small
town 100 kilometers from the central Russian
city of Penza, Lentulov studied art in
Kiev and St. Petersburg before moving to
Moscow in 1909. He was one of the founders
of the Jack of Diamonds, a group of Moscow
avant-garde artists that included turn-ofthe-century
greats like Malevich, Robert Falk,
Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova.
Although one of the major figures in Russian
avant-garde movement, Lentulov found
inspiration in lubok (Russian popular prints),
store signs, icons and ancient Russian architecture.
Lentulov also had access to the
Western art collections of pre-revolutionary
entrepreneurs Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov,
so you can see some allusions to Van
Gogh, Gauguin and early Matisse.
“We wanted to show how he changed
various styles: Behind every painting exhibited
here there’s a whole group of similar
works that we are just not able to show,” says
Svetlana Dzhafarova, the exhibit’s curator.
Lentulov’s paintings show the influence of
styles including Cubism, Primitivism, Fauvism,
Expressionism and Futurism. He was a
painter who liked to play with light.
“He’s most interested in how nature
changes due to different light, different positions
of the sun. Later he started painting
theater floodlights for the same reason. It’s
his justification for the transformation of
reality that we see on his paintings,” says
Dzhafarova.
Since it is being held at a theater museum,
the exhibition draws parallels between Lentulov’s
paintings and his works for theater—
stage sets and costume designs. This allows
us to see the close connections between the
two artforms in the first few decades of the
20th century.
“He had a certain theatricality in all of
his works, even those that had nothing to
do with theater,” says Dzhafarova. Russian
theater in the early 20th century was different
from that in Europe, because Russian
theaters started inviting high-profile professional
painters to produce backdrops, rather
than ordinary set designers.
About 70 costume and stage decoration
sketches for 10 theater productions are
exhibited, including “Hoffmann’s Fairytales,”
“Stepan Razin” and the model of the set for
Lermontov’s “Demon,” for which Lentulov
received the Diplôme de Medaille d’Or at the
Paris International Exhibition of Modern
Decorative and Industrial Arts in 1925.