Rouge, the exhibition at Paris Grand Palais, our pictures

From March 20 to July 1, 2019, the Grand Palais presents an exhibition on the art of socialism in Russia after the October Revolution, entitled Rouge. What should art be in the new socialist society? What is the balance of power between plastic innovation and ideological constraints? A plunge into a new vision of political art to be discovered as a matter of urgency.

A new vision of art... This is what the Grand Palais is offering with an exhibition on the art of socialism, Rouge, Art et utopies au pays des Soviets, from March 20 to July 1, 2019. The exhibition takes us back into the history of the Soviet Union and the artistic expression that confronted ideological constraints after the October Revolution in 1917.

A revolution that brought about an"upheaval in the social order, with decisive repercussions on artistic creation". And artists were so enthusiastic about this new vision of politics that, through their work, they helped to build the new society. The exhibition recounts the quintessence of this new society: its history, tensions and impulses, through a series of major works lent for the occasion by Russia's leading museums and the Centre Pompidou.

The exhibition is divided into two parts: the first highlights"the debates that vigorously animated the Soviet art scene in the aftermath of the revolution". What should the art of this new socialist society look like? This retrospective attempts to answer this question by presenting works by key figures such as Gustav Klutsis, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lyubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova and Alexander Rodchenko. Theater, design, architecture, photomontage, cinema... These were just some of the media used by artists to express this new political art, the avant-garde, whose aim was to abandon all forms of "bourgeois" art in favor of an "art of production".

The second part looks at the end of pluralism in art, defended after the October Revolution, with the advent of communism and Stalin. A pluralism that was reduced to one of the simplest art forms, figuration, considered to be the art"most capable of penetrating the masses and presenting them with models of the new social man". And artists such as Alexander Deineka, Yuri Pimenov, Alexander Samokhvalov and Alexei Pakhomov played a part in"the slow definition of the pictorial foundations of socialist realism", showing "working-class labor", "the body" and "the radiant future".

A must-see exhibition for all lovers of modern history.