Field of Action

The Moscow School in Context

A special adaptation for Calvert 22

Participating artists: Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Viktor Pivovarov, Andrei Monastyrski, Dmitry Prigov, Vitaly Komar, Alexander Melamid, Lev Rubinstein, Maria Konstantinova, Yuri Albert, Vadim Zakharov, Maria Chuikova and Andrei Filippov

Calvert 22, in collaboration with the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, Moscow, presents an exhibition of the highly influential Moscow Conceptual School. The development of this particular ‘school’ or movement during the 70s and 80s reflects one of the most significant and complicated periods of Russian culture in the latter half of the 20th century. Despite its stylistic and visual diversity, Moscow Conceptualism has been clearly established as a coherent movement, unified by shared anti-authoritarian attitudes born out of the artistic experimentation and avant-garde activity already taking shape in unofficial Russian art. A reaction to state sponsored Socialist Realism and the restrictions placed upon artistic freedom in the Soviet Union between the mid-fifties and the arrival of Glasnost thirty years later. The poet Lev Rubinstein once defined Moscow Conceptualism as the “art of approximations” which foregrounds the defining quality of this group as springing from their beliefs and processes rather than any tangible identity.

The works shown at Calvert 22 have been specially selected for the London version of the exhibition by Elena Kuprina-Lyakhovich and Alexandra Danilova, the original curators of the acclaimed exhibition, Field of Action. The Moscow Conceptual School in Context held at the Ekaterina Foundation in 2010, along with the independent curator David Thorp.