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30 www.russianartweek.com INTERVIEW To mark the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution next year, the Royal Academy will host an blockbuster exhibition entitled Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 from 11 February until 17 April 2017. Our editor, Lauren Warner, speaks with all three curators – Natalia Murray, Ann Dumas and John Milner – to learn more about the exhibition. Lauren Warner: How did the project Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 come about? Natalia Murray: I first had the idea to organise an exhibition in London which would include artists from all the artistic movements developed in the fifteen years after the Revolution when I was writing the biography of Nikolay Punin, published by BRILL Academic Publishers in 2012. I was very keen to organise it at the RA in order to achieve the powerful contrast of classic interiors and Soviet art, so I approached the RA in 2008 and together with the curator Ann Dumas, and a few years later with John Milner, we started working on this exhibition which aims to include not only avant-garde but artists from different artistic movements which developed in Russia at the time. LW: Why was the 1932 exhibition, Artists of the RSFSR Over 15 Years, so important? NM: The exhibition Fifteen Years of Artists of the RSFSR [Khudozhniki RSFSR za 15 let], held at the State Russian Museum in Leningrad from November 1932 till January 1933, was the most significant showcase of all the artistic movements which developed during the 15 years after the October 1917 Revolution. It was organised by the art critic Nikolay Punin in only six months. Originally it was supposed to be in Moscow but they did not have a big enough gallery to house it as it consisted of 2,640 works: 1,050 paintings, 1,500 graphic works and 90 sculptures made by 423 artists. These took up 35 rooms of the Russian Museum. It offered an unprecedented opportunity for artists, critics, and the general public to get an overview of the past and present of Soviet art. Artists who were excluded from this exhibition, like Vladimir Tatlin, felt that they had been excluded from the history of Soviet Art. ROYAL ACADEMY CURATORS

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