Lecture Series: “Nonconformists. Art Against the System”

This is not just a history of art — it’s a chronicle of inner freedom. Freedom that was controlled, restricted, erased — but still found its way. In workshops, in attics, in forests under open skies. In works created not "for exhibition", but because there was no other choice.

This series is about artists who created in defiance — of fear, ideology, censorship. It is about the struggle for the right to see and speak in their own visual language, in their own colors, without instructions or compromise.

From revolutionary avant-garde to apartment exhibitions and conceptual actions, we will explore how Soviet art not only survived in the shadows but actively resisted.

Program:

May 29 – The Birth of Resistance: Goncharova, Larionov, Exter, Rayonism, Futurism — the search for a new visual language in the 1910s.

June 5 – Avant-Garde and Revolution: Malevich, Tatlin, Constructivism. Art as utopia and its banishment during the era of dogmatism.

June 12 – The Harsh Turn: 1930s–1960s: The state as curator and censor.

June 19 – Art Under Ban: Bulldozer Exhibition, apartment galleries, the underground of the 1970s — artists against the regime.

June 26 – Nonconformism in Two Capitals: Moscow and Leningrad schools and the rise of independent art communities.

July 3 – The Last Frontier: Perestroika, first institutions, official exhibitions. How the nonconformists emerged from the underground — and what they encountered in freedom.