Utopian Reality ― Reconstructing Culture in Revolutionary Russia and Beyond

This collection of essays deals broadly with the visual and cultural manifestation of utopian aspirations in Russia of the 1920s and 1930s, while examining the before- and after-life of such ideas both geographically and chronologically.

Christina Lodder is Professor of the History and Philosophy of Art at the University of Kent. Her publications include Russian Constructivism (1983), Constructing Modernity: The Art and Career of Naum Gabo (with Martin Hammer, 2000), Gabo on Gabo (co-editor, 2000), Constructive Strands in Russian Art (2005) and Rethinking Malevich (co-editor, 2007). Maria Kokkori is a research fellow at the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her Ph.D. in 2008 at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship with a focus on Russian Constructivism. Her latest research project explores Kazimir Malevich’s teaching activities at the Vitebsk Art School in Belarus between 1919 and 1923. Maria Mileeva is an Early Career Lecturer at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, where she completed her PhD in 2011. Her latest research project explores the discourse of centre and periphery in Soviet cultural and institutional history by looking at a network of regional art museums in Tbilisi, Yerevan, Baku, Kiev, Saratov and Kazan.