„Dvizhenie Group“

The Olomouc Museum of Art, under the direction of Professor Tomáš Glance of the University of Zurich, will present a unique corpus of works by the Dviženije group and documentation from the archives of art historians Jindřich Chalupecký, Jiří Padrta and photographer Jan Ságl, supplemented by other important loans. The emphasis will be on the question of creativity and freedom of the individual and his interaction and confrontation with society.
At the beginning of the 1960s, after thirty years of Stalinism, at least fragmentary information about the domestic traditions of avant-garde art of the first third of the 20th century, as well as the connection with current artistic developments in the world, which was commonplace before the Bolshevik Revolution and in the first period after it, are more tangibly returning to Soviet culture. At the same time as groundbreaking exhibitions of American, French, and British art, the domestic art scene has gradually grown stronger, especially since the late 1950s. Although it has in most cases almost no support, and in some cases none at all, from the official cultural policy, which continues to spout platitudes about socialist realism, it has nevertheless created a loose network of communities interested in contemporary art, free of state commissions.
Vedle Beljutinova studia, které se soustředí na abstraktní malířství, nebo transdisciplinárního společenství kulturního undergroundu, pro který se ujalo označení Lianozovská škola (podle místa na předměstí Moskvy, které bylo jejím centrem), vzniká na počátku 60. let také kolektiv Dviženije. Na rozdíl od jiných společenství nezpochybňuje volnou sounáležitost jednotlivých členů, naopak ji zdůrazňuje. Roli předáka, či dokonce neformálního guru a manažera zastává od počátku Lev Nusberg, ačkoliv jeho hierarchicky výsadní roli brzy napadá Francisko Infante, který po několika letech se skandálními obviněními skupinu opouští a pokračuje v dodnes trvající sólové dráze. Další členky a členové koexistují umělecky i lidsky harmoničtěji a po léta v obměňujících se sestavách vytvářejí desítky invenčních děl i rozsáhlých projektů. Mezi významné osobnosti od počátku patřili Vjačeslav Kolejčuk, Rimma Zaněvskaja Sapgir, Vladimir Akulinin nebo Michail Dorochov, později Galina Bitt, Taťjana Bystrova, Natalja Prokuratova či Alexandr Grigorjev. V polovině 60. let seznamy členů, které Nusberg neúnavně sestavoval, mohly čítat až 30 osob a hlavní představitel Dviženija, v době jeho založení pětadvacetiletý, si zakládal na tom, že průměrný věk i s postupujícími roky stále zůstával velmi nízký.
From 1964 onwards, Dvizheniye began to penetrate abroad, although the artists themselves could not travel. Especially in the first period, Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Italy and Poland played an important role. The group’s programme was quite in line with what Jindřich Chalupecký, for example, had formulated as the main tasks of contemporary art at the time, and he had been following the group’s work since the second half of the 1960s: it was about the relationship between the artist and society, but also about artistic research in the spirit of the human need for transcendence in relation to pragmatic existence. Kinetic principle, futurology, cosmos and cybernetics become the main concepts of the work. In addition to drawings of utopian biospheres, linking natural principles with technical constructs, the group also focuses on the construction of objects in which geometric abstraction is combined with movement, light and sound effects, and the principles of theatricality and performance. Using the means of body art and rope art, the collective stages erotically and theatrically ambitious “kinetic games” on the beaches of the Crimea or in the historical backdrop of Petrodvorets (Peterhof) near Leningrad.
Many of the projects remain unrealised, but a number of them manage to be realised through subtle negotiations with the authorities (for example, with the Central Committee of the Komsomol) as illustrations of Soviet progress in various areas of new technologies and futurological visions.
However, the consolidation of Brezhnev’s stagnation in the first half of the 1970s, as well as illusory notions of possible success in the West, led to the emigration of some members of the group and its subsequent disintegration. The group’s first and last large-scale exhibition – accompanied by a now iconic catalogue – was held in 1978 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bochum, West Germany, where Brno-born Petr Spielmann served as director. Since the early 1980s, Lev Nusberg has lived in the USA, and a major retrospective exhibition of the Dviženije group and a new telling of its riveting story is still awaited.
Author of the exhibition:
Tomáš Glanc (*1969) deals with the cultural history of Eastern Europe, especially Russian literature and visual arts, artistic avant-gardes, underground and contemporary art practice. His research interests include the relationship between poetry and performance, Slavic ideology, and cultural and intellectual transfer. He is a graduate of Charles University in Prague, where he later taught and in 2000-2003 headed the newly established Institute of Slavic and East European Studies. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Konstanz. In 2005-2007 he was the director of the Czech Centre in Moscow. He worked at the universities of Bremen, Basel, Novosibirsk and Humboldt University in Berlin. Since 2015 he has been a member of the Institute of Eastern Europe at the University of Zurich. He also works as a curator, translator and cultural journalist. Among other things, he is the author of the publication Coeval Russia. Icons of Post-Soviet Culture (2011) or Samizdat. Past & Present (2019) and one of the editors of The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture (2024). He is a member of many Czech and international editorial and scientific boards.