Russian early twentieth century women artists

This video says about itself:

This was a report I did for my painting class. It features Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, and Lyubov Popova.

The empire of the Russian czars in the late nineteenth century was a country of much oppression and inequality.

The majority of people were peasants, exploited by landlords.

In the cities, conditions for workers were usually bad.

Secret police, and anti-Semitism and other prejudices were rampant.

There was much discrimination against women.

In these circumstances, many dissatisfied people went to more western countries in Europe.

Including artists: Ilya Repin went to Paris, considered the world’s art center before 1914.

There, he was influenced by the rise of the Impressionist movement; and painted about a commemoration of the Paris Commune of 1871.

Over half a century later, after Russia had become the Soviet Union, Repin‘s work would be considered the model for the “socialist realist” style.

The exiles included women: socialist economist Rosa Luxemburg went from the czarist ruled part of Poland to Switzerland and Germany.

And they included women artists: like Marie Bashkirtseff, born in the Ukraine in 1858, who died in Paris in 1884.

Later, Natalia Goncharova, born in Russia in 1881, would be there for the last time in 1915, and would die in Paris in 1962.

Sonia Delaunay-Terk was born in the Ukraine in 1885, arrived in Paris in 1905, and died there in 1979.

Some dissatisfied Russians stayed, or went back.

They, including many women, played roles in avant-garde artistic movements, partly in parallel to the 1905 and 1917 revolutions in Russia.

Women in these movements included Varvara Stepanova, exceptional in having been able to get art education though from peasant origin.

And Nadezhda Udaltsova, Olga Rosanova, and Lyubov Popova.

Women artists and US museums today: here.

Czarist Russia’s Sanitary Bureau reported this week in 1910 that more than 77,000 Russians had died in a seasonal cholera outbreak out of a total of 170,000 diagnosed cases, with the death toll still rising: here.

Alexandra Kollontai: here.