Hello to all Russian Avant-garde Gallery visitors and subscribers. The summer school holidays end today, a new school year begins. Another update is due for the work on this website.

A New Artist in a New Movement and in an Existing Category

This month has been dedicated to a truly amazing artist, and has been for me another voyage of discovery. This artist is Alexadr Rodchenko.

I have made two separate pages for Rodchenko: one in the group to which he belonged, and one in the Mass and Agit art category; all in all nearly 200 new works:

• Alexandr Rodchenko (OBMOKhU) - 129 works
• Alexandr Rodchenko (Mass & Agit Art) - 66 works

The more I studied this artist the more I became fascinated with his insight, the sheer volume of his talent. His drive despite all the obstacles life has placed in his way was nothing short of amazing to me; his achievements in every sphere of creation he took upon himself - astounding. The impact of this artist is felt to this day in several disciplines of art.

However, I had a difficulty to overcome, which I have succeeded in part to do. You see, the books I had in my possession detailing Rodchenko's work, left some of the crucial information out for many of the works: the size and materials, the whereabouts of the works. I have searched among other publications, Internet and friends and succeeded in recovering a good portion of this information, but there are still many works for which it is missing.

Despite this minor setback, I am publishing the pages on Rodchenko today, and will in the corse of the following month or two continue all possible efforts to recover the rest of the missing information and complete it.

A new movement is opened: OBMOKhU, to which Rodchenko belonged.

Due to this time-consuming and unforeseen challenge, I have postponed making new pages for both Popova and Tatlin in the Mass and Agit category. They are under work and will probably be published in September.

Recommended Books on Avant-garde - Improved

I have been working on the Recommended Books section in the Avant-garde Community category. All three available pages were modified in the following way:

General Collections on Avant-garde:

Many books in both English and Russian were added.

In order to facilitate the search, a table was added, dividing the books into several themes, with a "check" icon link bringing you to each desired theme. The books recommended were divided into the following categories - each in English and Russian: General and museum colections;

• Private collections;
• Porcelain;
• Theatre;
• Textile;
• Architecture;
• "...ism"s;
• Poetry, literature;
• Cinema;
• Music;
• Theory

Specific Movement Collections:

A table listing all the movements was created with a "check" icon link for either English or Russian books recommended on the movement.

Individual Artists:

The same "check" links were added to the pages made for individual artists. You may browse by Artist name according to alphabet, and see for which I have already made recommendations.

You may also get to the recommendations directly from the pages for the artists, wherever you see on the artist page the following icon link: . Clicking on it will take you to the recommended page, opening a new window.

These pages are constantly updated, and improved.

Reminder: Refresh Your Pages

As always, I would like to remind everybody to occasionally refresh the pages, due to the constant changes and additions on the website. This will ensure that you always see the latest version of the pages, and not the page cached (stored) on your computer from the last visit.

If you do not know how to do this - you can see instructions in the first issue of the newsletter, at the archive (the What's New page). Or see your web browser help section.

Vera Kofyan