“The city is filled with constructivist and functionalist architecture” – Kommersant FM

Kommersant FM columnist Dmitry Butkevich talks about the contemporary art festival taking place in Ivanovo and discusses how the city corresponds to its spirit.

The fifth festival of contemporary art called “The First Avant-Garde Factory” is taking place in Ivanovo. Vanguard in Ivanovo! Sounds weird? Not really. I don’t even remember that the first strike, that is, the weavers’ strike, took place precisely in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, which is where the First Russian Revolution of 1905 began. Well, then you know.

And already under Soviet rule, in the early 1920s, here, in the center of domestic weaving, such “amazons of the avant-garde” as Varvara Stepanova and Lyubov Popova made samples for avant-garde textiles – one of the calling cards of the new Russian art.

And the city is filled with the architecture of constructivism and functionalism – the achievements of new Soviet art. Wandering around it even in the rain is a pleasure: “Ship House”, “Bird House”, “Horseshoe House”. Where to make the “First Avant-Garde Factory”!

This is what Irina Golubeva, general producer and author of the idea of ​​the festival, says: “We have always chosen the main exhibition art project as the central event. This year this is a great project that the AZ Museum did. We don’t have just one, there are several of them, but this one is the most beautiful, amazing.”

The festival is multi-genre. It’s funny that the “genres” even include a culinary component. One of the city’s trendiest restaurants serves a set menu called “Ogneisms”, inspired by the avant-garde. There is, for example, “cubo-futurism” (poached sturgeon and lingonberry jelly), “linism” (tartlet, white chocolate ganache and sturgeon caviar). The waitresses are trained to serve each dish with a postcard with the work of the artist in the corresponding genre and even pronounce their names and styles.

The entire festival and its flagship exhibition “Sympathetic Interactions”, organized by the AZ Museum, which is worthy of a separate story, are dedicated to the memory of Sergei Solovyov, art critic, friend, native of Ivanovo.