Tretyakov Gallery Masterworks

The fifth volume of a six-part survey of the State Tretyakov Gallery gathers 682 works by 132 artists from the years when Russian art tore up its own rulebook. Kazimir Malevich puts a black square where the icon used to hang. Lyubov Popova builds paintings like scaffolding. El Lissitzky present here in unusual depth, with Prouns, book designs, exhibition rooms and a skyscraper proposed for a Moscow square treats the page, the wall and the city as one problem. Wassily Kandinsky passes through on his way out of figuration. Around them the country is being rebuilt, and the volume follows the drawings into dams, clubs and school buildings. Suprematism and Constructivism, theatre and typography, posters, architecture and the first Soviet decade. Large reproductions, each with its painter, title and date.