Issues in Gustavs Klucis' Agitational Stand Research
Issues in Gustavs Klucis' Agitational Stand Research

Summary/Abstract: In the history of world art, the name of Gustavs Klucis (1895–1938) has so far appeared in two contexts – photomontage and agitprop art. The designs for the five-year anniversary of the October Revolution of 1922 and for the Fourth Comintern – agitation stands numbering in the dozens – have received the most attention and have been so influential that since 1967 museums worldwide have regularly reconstructed these works, rediscovering them for each generation of artists, curators and scholars. Some admire the engineering of some of the structures, others are fascinated by their visionary qualities, but some questions about their realisation remain unanswered. While researching Latvian artists' groups in inter-war Soviet Russia, the author came across information that led her to trace untested assumptions. The aim of the publication is to shed light on certain contradictions and to make clarifications, without pretending to be a comprehensive analysis of Klucis' agitational stands. The researchers have long referred to information on the realisation of Klucis’ agitational stands, created by art historian Larisa Oginskaya and later disseminated. Neither newsreels, press or photographs of the structures confirm this. Klucis, who used a camera on a daily basis and took pride in his work, did not capture and catalogue the realised construction. Similarly, information in the press casts doubt on the fact that some of the designs for the festive stands were on display at the exhibition devoted to the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in the Kremlin's George Hall. In addition to Klucis’ signed prints, several of the stand projects could actually belong to a group of Latvian artists. A statement in the newspaper “Krievijas Cīņa” of 22 October 1922 said: "For the celebration of the 5th anniversary of the October Revolution, a closed design competition was announced by the NCCP for the production of projects for the decoration of Kremlin and Soviet houses", where the second prize was awarded to a group of revolutionary Latvian artists (Kārlis Veidemanis, Kārlis Johansons and Gustavs Klucis) who "have brilliantly proved their abilities at such grandiose works, the decoration of houses, streets and squares for national festivals, which is the field of work of future artists". This is the only official information confirming the collaboration, so the author went on a research trip to the George Costakis Collection at the Museum of Modern Art in Thessaloniki, which holds the largest collection of original designs for agitational stands. In this collection, a representative group of works could be highlighted, drawn on similar blank paper, with one edge between 17.5 and 17.8 cm long and the other between 26.8 and 27 cm wide, which could have been submitted to the above-mentioned project competition. Although it has so far been attributed to Klucis, the authorship should be critically re-examined. Here we can identify projects that are directly oriented towards the structure, where we can find links with the work of Kārlis Johansons (1890–1929): the structures have no superfluous elements, are subordinate to function and blur the boundary between interior and exterior; they are based on a cross, self-tensioning, prefabricated combinations of metal and rope, as well as the combination and balancing of three equal support trees with an intersecting cross. The stands identified in the publication (both clean copies and drafts) are drawn in several stages and are heterogeneous in nature. There is a deliberate attempt to simplify the structures, for example in the design of the staircases of the orator stands. Conversely, in the stand "Screen", signed and reproduced by Klucis, the basket of the lectern has lost its connection with thoughtful use, turning into an appliquéd or suspended grid, to which a ladder leads in only one case; here the focus is on decorative multi-functionality. The catalogue of works, or "Red Album II", compiled by Klucis, contains the proportionally smallest part of the stands; they are prints reproduced in plate or letterpress, as well as one signed original drawing, which has an anonymous counterpart in the Latvian National Museum of Art. The artist's autobiography is evasive in describing the process of creating the stands where "it was necessary to change their external appearance", without naming the artist. Klucis also highlights his own contribution - "during the first and second quinquennium I took an active part in decorating the city for revolutionary celebrations" – without mentioning the regular collaboration in decorating the Kremlin and other representative places in Moscow from 1918 to 1921, which included the more ambitious innovator, as recorded in the materials of the Latvian Artists' Working Commune. In the context of the three Latvians, Klucis is the first to publicly exhibit a stand dedicated to the Five Years of the Revolution – a utopian structure with a projection screen – or a graphic work, with which he was represented at the First Russian Art Exhibition in Berlin, while Johansons had spatial constructions there. In 1922, however, the activities of Kārlis Veidemanis (1897–1938) show that he also followed new trends, while the design of the 1925 production “Proletariat and the Comintern” shows his constructive expressions in stage design. The author worked with framed works and conflicting information from collections' catalogues, and was unable to access the corresponding originals in the Tretyakov Gallery. In order to confidently clarify the conclusions, the works would need to be re-framed, re-sized and checked for technique, as the English version uses the term 'ink' rather than 'Indian ink' and, for example, the gouache mentioned in the description is often not visually visible. Similarly, a chemical examination of all the collections would allow us to confirm or deny the assumption made in the publication that the drawings by the anonymous group were a collective effort. Or was it just an ideological collaboration? Why is it that in the supposedly chronologically earliest title of Klucis' utopian building project, “Workers of the World Unite”, there are no mistakes, while in the anonymous agitational stands, also signed by Klucis, in the same title, for example, the double W is missing or has been corrected? This needs to be clarified by further research, checking not only the authorship but also the date, which has so far been uncritically assumed to be 1922 and repeated.

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