On June 26, the Russian House in Brussels invites you to a lecture titled “Three Faces of the Russian Avant-Garde: Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Kandinsky.” The speaker will be Mikhail Bryzgalov – General Director of the National Museum of Music of Russia, Honored Art Worker of the Russian Federation, President of the Association of Music Museums and Collectors, member of the Council for Culture under the President of the Russian Federation, and member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation.

The Russian avant-garde had a powerful influence on 20th-century world art. Originating in the pre-revolutionary period, this movement survived the Great October Revolution. The new Soviet reality of the late 1910s and 1920s demanded new art forms, and the avant-garde found its place. The Soviet avant-garde became an organic continuation and development of the Russian avant-garde.

The lecture examines three figures of the Russian avant-garde – the artist and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944), and the composers Sergei Prokofiev (1891 – 1953) and Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975) – both individually and together, including in the context of the art of the 1920s.

The lecture is based on materials used in the exhibition “Double Portrait Against the Backdrop of the Century,” prepared for the 135th anniversary of S.S. Prokofiev’s birth and the 120th anniversary of D.D. Shostakovich’s birth.