Two Women Patrons of the Russian Avant-Garde: Nadezhda Dobychina and Klavdia Mikhailova

Description

In early 1910s, two pioneering women entrepreneurs, Nadezhda Dobychina in St Petersburg and Klavdia Mikhailova in Moscow set up two of the first art galleries in Russia. Skilfully balancing current art market trends and daring avant-garde experimentations, Dobychina and Mikhailova soon transformed their establishments into vibrant centres of Russian artistic life. Their exhibitions of well-established national and international artists attracted enthusiastic crowds and won acclaim from leading art critics. They did not hesitate to engage in more provocative ventures, including the controversial Goncharova retrospectives in 1914, which for the first time put on view over 500 cutting-edge avant-garde works, and the famous 0.10 exhibition of 1915 at Dobychina's Art Bureau in St. Petersburg, where Malevich's famous Black Square was displayed for the very first time. Based on previously unpublished archival materials and illustrations, this book will tell the story of the lives and adventures of these two remarkable women. Operating in a predominantly man's world, they focussed on discovering and promoting those Russian artists who later went on to become major figures in the history of world modernism.

Dr. Natalia Murray grew up in St. Petersburg where she graduated from the Academy of Arts. She is now is an associate lecturer and senior curator at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her most recent book Art for the Worker; Proletarian Art and Festive Decorations of Petrograd. 1917-1920 was published by Brill in May 2018. In November 2018 the Russian translation of her 2012 book The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde; The Life and Times of Nikolay Punin was published by Slovo in Moscow. In 2017 she curated a major exhibition Revolution. Russian Art. 1917-1932 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. She is currently working on several exhibition projects in Moscow and Paris. Her books and articles extend across the wide field of 19th-20th century Russian and European art, and she has featured in films about the Hermitage Museum and the Russian Revolution and in programmes for BBC Radio 4 and World Service. Dr Natalia Budanova is an independent art historian and a member of the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre (CCRAC) Advisory Board. After graduated from Cambridge, she completed her postgraduate studies at the Courtuald Institute of Art where she also received her PhD. Her research, lectures and publications engage in investigating the role of women in Russian art of the late Imperial and early Soviet periods, patterns of artistic exchange between Russia and the Western Europe, and the response of Russian visual art to the events of the Great War.

"Tells the fascinating and, as yet, untold story of two pioneering Russian galleries. . . . It's a page-turner of success and failure, risk and scandal, commerce and charity. . . . [The book] opens an invaluable vista onto the historiography of the Russian and international art market, a factor that has been comparatively obliterated in scholarship and popular perceptions of the avant-garde."-- "Russian Art Focus"