Modernism and World Revolution

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Introduction

Jing Han, Director & Professor of Institute for Australian and Asian Art and Culture at Western Sydney University

The intricate relationship between modernism in art and Marxist world revolution remains one of the most compelling and complex narratives in twentieth-century art history.

Following the October Revolution of 1917, Anatoly Lunacharsky, a Russian writer and revolutionary, was appointed by Lenin to head the Commissariat for Enlightenment (Narkompros). He appointed leading modernist artists, including Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Kazimir Malevich and Alexandra Exter, to state positions and allocated public funds to acquire avant-garde works, establishing pioneering museums dedicated to modern art. In 1919, Vladimir Tatlin was commissioned to design the Monument to the Third International, an enduring icon of Constructivism.

In the 1930s, modernism and revolutionary politics converged again in opposition to fascism. Picasso's Guernica became a powerful indictment of fascist atrocities. Meanwhile, in Mexico, Leon Trotsky, André Breton and Diego Rivera co-authored Towards a Free Revolutionary Art, advocating artistic freedom and opposing totalitarianism of both the left and right.

After the Second World War, artists including Picasso and Fernand Léger joined the French Communist Party, while Renato Guttuso in Italy and Hans Erni in Switzerland contributed to the period's politically engaged art. Mexico and Latin America became centres of the Modern Mural…