Hello to all Russian Avant-garde Gallery visitors and subscribers.

Today, once again, the Russian Avant-garde Gallery is celebrating its creator, Tatiana Kofyan's birthday!

And I am happy at this special date to make several important announcements about the February additions, and also make two requests.

Announcing - Gallery Forum opened!

As promised in January, this month I have added the long-planned Russian Avant-garde Art Forum. Already several people have registered and began posting and starting conversations on the subjects of interest in Russian Avant-garde and other art as well.

This Forum can in the near future begin to serve as a center for connecting of people from all over the world, visitors of the Gallery, exchanging their knowledge conversing with others, who share the same love and interest.

However, without your participation and contribution this Forum will not become what you and I want it to be. Obviously, a new Forum is still rather empty, and needs to be filled with interesting bits of knowledge and people's exchange of ideas.

So I ask you to subscribe to the Forum (it is, naturally, free) and help at this beginning period to get the conversations going, so others will want to join you and contribute to you and to themselves.

You can also leave there suggestions, ideas and other feedback regarding both the forum and the Gallery website, at the specially made "Suggestions and Feedback" subforum.

To see and to join the Forum go here.

A New Artist Added at an Existing Category

This month once again I have gone back to an artist whose page has been set up about 9 years ago, at the very beginning of the Gallery, in the World of Art group, but did not do justice to his career. This artist is a personal favorite of mine: Boris Kustodiev.

The page of Boris Kustodiev has featured hitherto only 17 works, and failed to represent this productive and gifted painter. I have totally re-made this page, including a new biography, so now it is NEW, and shows 127 works by this artist.

• Kustodiev, Boris (World of Art) - 127 works

The page of Boris Kustodiev in the Mass and Agit category has remained practically unchanged, except for replacement of the biography with the newly written one.

A New Category - Special Bookshops

I am also pleased to announce that a new category was added this month, listing special bookshops which may interest especially the Avant-garde Loving Community. Two curious bookshops are presented there today:

Marijana Dworski Books: Rare, Out-of-print, Antiquarian & Modern Books

Marijana Dworski Books had the good fortune to purchase a library of Russian books selected for their visual impact and exciting graphic design, with some of great literary importance, too. All can be categorized Avant-Garde. Click here for details.

books4looks©: a unique way to display the striking graphics of contemporary and 20th Century book design. Actual books hang as ‘Art’ whilst remaining intact and accessible to the reader.

books4looks© specializes in sourcing and displaying contemporary book design and illustration of the 20th century. Ranging from formality to folk tale, there is a huge variety of imagery to choose from for wall hanging or free standing presentation. Click here for details.

I hope you will find interest in this category, and to add many interesting ones to it in future.

A Special Request

About 20 months or so ago, I was extremely fortunate to have been granted this opportunity to continue developing my mother's dream, the Russian Avant-garde Gallery.

I am immensely grateful to the people who made it possible for me to devote my time and energy to this undertaking. It was my mother's passion and dearest wish, to bring this art to people, to open a window into the unique phenomenon the likes of which is unknown anywhere, both for people who never heard of it and for specialists in art (and anyone in between).

But, the present economical crisis has touched me, too, and I am at a point where this project requires further assistance, financially. It is extremely difficult for me to devote almost full-time-job, daily (or shall I say, nightly?) to the development of this website without further support.

I ask all my loyal subscribers, to please consider whether they themselves or someone they know could be interested in supporting this cultural and educational project of immense importance for the nearest couple of years in the form of grant or donation.

Please, contact me through the website or by replying to the Newsletter mail, if you do know of somebody or wish to offer support. All suggestions are most welcome.

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. Or see your web browser help section.

Vera Kofyan