Union of Russian Artists
Russian exhibiting society, active from 1903 to 1923. It was set up when the WORLD OF ART group, based in St Petersburg, amalgamated with the Moscow artists who had participated in the Exhibitions of the Work of 36 Artists held in Moscow in December 1901 and 1902. United by their hostility to old forms and the desire for exhibitions that were not controlled by juries, the two groups nevertheless embraced widely divergent aesthetic stances. While
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Union of Russian Artists
Russian exhibiting society, active from 1903 to 1923. It was set up when the WORLD OF ART group, based in St Petersburg, amalgamated with the Moscow artists who had participated in the Exhibitions of the Work of 36 Artists held in Moscow in December 1901 and 1902. United by their hostility to old forms and the desire for exhibitions that were not controlled by juries, the two groups nevertheless embraced widely divergent aesthetic stances. While former World of Art artists, such as Alexandre Benois and Léon Bakst, attacked the Wanderers, some Moscow artists, including Abram Arkhipov and Konstantin Korovin, continued to exhibit with them. The Union’s exhibitions were held in Moscow. Inevitably, they were not stylistically unified: academically lyrical landscapes by Nikolay Klodt (1865–1918) and Arkady Rylov were shown alongside ‘impressionist’ paintings by Igor’ Grabar’, ‘symbolist’ canvases by Viktor Borisov-Musatov, more experimental works by Valentin Serov and Mikhail Vrubel’, as well as elegantly decorative pictures by Ivan Bilibin and Konstantin Somov. After the seventh exhibition in 1910 the Union split precisely because of such aesthetic differences, exacerbated by Benois’s review of the show, which praised the St Petersburg artists but castigated the majority of works as ‘fussy, tasteless and lifeless’. The Moscow artists remained within the Union, but the St Petersburg artists seceded and began to exhibit again under the name World of Art. By 1917 the Union represented outdated artistic concerns: it held its 18th and final exhibition in 1923, after which many former members, including Rylov, Arkhipov and Isaak Brodsky, joined AKhRR, the ASSOCIATION OF ARTISTS OF REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA.
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