Morphology of the Russian abstract. Maria Valyaeva. 2003

formal-aesthetic sources. It is Cezanne's painting and cubism related to it in its analytical and synthetical interpretation; impressionism and neoimpressionism whose visual discoveries attracted many prominent masters of abstractionism;. modernist style and pictorial symbolism, which are associated with early Kandinsky, Kupka, Mondrian, Picasso, Klee and some other masters of modernism. Also a special structural-semantic role was played here by expressionism with its orientation on Van Gogh's and Munk's vision, with the permanent dualism of figuration and abstraction. At the dawn of abstract impressionism, its specific attributes were closely associated with a wide variety of influences, among them - impressionist, fauvist and last but not least symbolist impulses.
Having turned symbolist fantasies into a graceful stylistic shape, modernist art passed on as a heritage to the younger generation of 20th century speculative-utopian attitudes with a whole number of form-building and conceptual ideas. Abstractionism inherited from the modernist style an accentuated focus on line and plane, a deliberate use of ornamental forms borrowed from ancient and decorative art; a deliberate striving to overcome a plastic distinction of the figure against the background; a musical sense; a freedom in play of form and meaning; the loss of any concretization of content in the visible image of the work; a passionate need for an absolute emancipation from literary bounds Abstract art, rooted in modernist style, in wide variety of branches of its future ways has never lost touch with natural and sensitive vitality, about which its scholars pointed out in their books (M.Ragon, for example). This romantic abstraction line traditionally stood against the intellectual ascesis of post-cubist abstractionism and constructivism. Not completely alien, at times coming into a direct contact or filling the interspace by various branches of their sturdy trees, both trends provided the possibility to translate into life a wide variety of individual-psychological patterns of artistic endeavour. The evolutionary pattern of abstract art after the Second World War, determined by a wave-like alternation of the two concepts, before long manifested a sense of fatigue - at one time from irrational informalism, at another - from its opposite - the constructiveness of neo-dadaist, optical and geometrical trends.
Similar patterns, geographically and chronologically condensed,

with an understandable lag, became felt with the inception of "thaw" in Russian post-war abstractionism. Though not so grand as in the West, but to the same extent aware that it is a substance of energy, the abstract picture executed by Zlotnikov, Slepyan, Masterkova, Nemukhin, Tyapushkin, Kulakov, Andreyenkov, the Volkov brothers or Belyutin revived the interest in color expression and symbols, with a strainuous effort having restored continuity relative to the national cultural tradition that official art betrayed.
Had biased politics not interfered in the affairs of arts in Russia after the 1920s, probably, those who for decades continued or could have continued adhering to the lyric and expressionist line in abstractionism, could have been, like Delone in Europe, a link between the first and the second phase in the evolution of the national abstract school. It is these trends that prevailed during the post-Stalinist revival taking priority over neoconstructivism and sterile geometrics. Freedom-longing sensibilities, aspiring to express themselves through colour and absolutely free form mixed with a sensation of shock the young artists experienced when they attended the exhibition of foreign art held in Moscow at the turn of the 1950s - the 1960s. Mostly the exhibits displayed there consisted of works executed in the vein of abstract expressionism. In the memoirs of "thaw" grands there is a recurring theme about the deep impression the exhibitions made and their result on creative work.
Vladimir Nemukhin recalls how in 1957, after having been to one of these expositions open in conjunction of the World Youth Festival, he and Lidia Masterkova on the way back from Moscow to the village outside Kashira, where they were living at the time, could not utter a single word - so impressed by what they had seen. The next day Masterkova painted her first abstract picture.
Alexander Volkov began abstract painting inspired by Pollock's works that overturned his ideas about art. This happened in 1959 when in Gorky Park under the Fuler cupola was held the legendary American exhibition representing Rothko, Pollock and de Kooning.
Things were somewhat different with "signal" painting of Yuri Zlotnikov, spatial structures of Vladimir Andreyenkov, meditative geometry of Aleksey Kamensky. Their impressions of the exhibitions superimposed on their own firm conviction

"Viewing my work in the context of abstract art, I would define it as follows: Malevich's suprematism may be described as pictures with geometrical elements having mass, weight and shown in dynamics. In Mondrian's compositions, though, picture elements no longer carry mass or weight but display the energy inherent in the juxtaposition of elements. The dynamic compositions of mine, however, revealed the dynamics as it is, analyzing their origins that give rise to our sensual tactile emotions. The analysis of these motor feelings and their arrangement to create compositions that would include the effect of these elements is what I have been doing since the late 1950s - the early 1960s."

Yuri Zlotnikov