Dr Natalia Budanova and Dr Natalia Murray present their new book about two prominent art dealers of the Russian avant-garde, who significantly contributed to the development of the artists’ circle and whose names are rarely remembered today.
The event takes place at Pushkin House with live stream and on-demand recording available online.
Alexander Golovin, Portrait of Nadezhda Dobychina, 1920
In the early 1910s, two pioneering female entrepreneurs, Nadezhda Dobychina in St Petersburg and Klavdia Mikhailova in Moscow, set up two of the first art galleries in Russia. Skilfully balancing contemporary art market trends and daring avant-garde experimentations, Dobychina and Mikhailova soon transformed their establishments into vibrant centres of Russian artistic life.
Their exhibitions of well-established national and international artists attracted enthusiastic crowds and won acclaim from leading art critics. They were not afraid of engaging in more provocative ventures, producing the controversial Goncharova retrospectives in 1914, which displayed over 500 cutting-edge avant-garde works for the first time, and the famous 0.10 exhibition of 1915 at Dobychina’s Art Bureau in St. Petersburg where Malevich’s famous Black Square was displayed for the very first time.
Based on previously unpublished archival materials and illustrations, this book will tell the story of the lives and adventures of these two remarkable women. Operating in a predominantly man’s world, they focused on discovering and promoting Russian artists who later went on to become major figures in world modernism.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr Natalia Budanova is an independent art historian and a member of the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre (CCRAC) Advisory Board. After graduating from Cambridge, she completed her postgraduate studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she also received her PhD. Her research, lectures and publications investigate the role of women in Russian art of the late Imperial and early Soviet periods, patterns of artistic exchange between Russia and Western Europe, and the response of Russian visual art to the events of the Great War.
Dr Natalia Murray grew up in St. Petersburg where she graduated from the Academy of Arts. She is now an associate lecturer and senior curator at the Courtauld Institute of Art. In 2017 she curated a major exhibition Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and is currently working on several exhibition projects in Moscow and Paris. Her books and articles extend across the wide field of 19th-20th century Russian and European art. She has featured in films about the Hermitage Museum and the Russian Revolution, and in programmes for BBC Radio 4 and World Service.