Russia
In the Russian empire, Art Nouveau was called stil modern (modern style in English). It
was perhaps the most dominant artistic and architectural movement that shaped
the appearance of today St. Petersburg, and to a lesser degree, of Moscow,
Nizhnij (Nizhny) Novgorod and many other cities. Riga, now in Latvia, which was
part of the Russian Empire and its turn of the century buildings were
representative of the general direction of artistic and architectural thought in
the country.
During the second half of the XIX century and up to 1914, the russian empire
comes up to the european economical level. The construction of the transsiberian
railway (more than 9000km between 1891 and 1903) is representative of the growth
of industry. Industry is less and less owned by noble people. And since 1861,
serfdom is replaced by a new system : villages own the land that was
redistributed regularly to peasants.
St. Petersburg alone has several thousands surviving Art Nouveau buildings,
in fact large urban districts were rebuilt entirely with Art Nouveau structures
before 1914. Unfortunately, this heritage fell into obscurity as in other
european countries. In France, Russian heritage was redicovered by the French
communist and resistant poet Aragon after world war II. If Russia took a large part in the Art Nouveau
movements, it was not the same in the later Art Deco due the Bolshevist
dictature.
St Petersburg
Famous artists :
- Alexei Bubyr (architect)
- Paul (Pavel) Susor (architect). He designed 80 buildings in St. Petersburg
alone, some are Art Nouveau, others are what is called Eklektika (eclectic
style) mixture of classicist, neo-Renaissance and pseudo-Russian styles.
Singer Building is good example of his period work.
- Fedor (Theodore) Lidval.(architect). Maybe the most well known artist of
St Petersburg at that time.
- Grechannikov also built several buildings in the same period, some of them
feel quite neoclassicist
- And dozens of other architects. The most active were perhaps several
members of Benois clan, Baranovsky, Vasiliev, Gogen, Grimm, Ivanov, Maresev,
Kaigorodov, Schaub, Schmidt.
Moscow
Maxime Gorki, the famous communist writer, lived in one of
the most marvellous Art Nouveau house of Moscow. This house was later
transformed in the Gorki Museum. A recent restoration gave visitors the original
state of this house even if it was not what Gorki saw in the thirties when he
lived in this house. The handrail must be seen, but the building is in itself a
complete work of art : every thing is designed in the Art Nouveau style from the
railings to the stain glass.
Famous artists :
- Fedor Chekhtel. The architect of the above Gorki Museum.
- Alexander Kouznetzov
- Kekouchev
- Ilya Bondarenko
- Vroubel
- Ivanov-Shits
Thanks to Eugene Suharnikov <euge_suharnikov@mail.ru>
for his help.
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