Russian Avant-garde Theatre: War Revolution and Design, V&A

Russian Avant-garde Theatre at the V&A Museum presents a spectacular collection of stagecraft from the period 1913-33, including costumes, lighting, and theatre design from the archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The exhibition celebrates a turning point in Russian cultural production, as musicians, composers, visual artists, writers, and performers worked collaboratively to develop new forms of expression - free and unburdened of the past.

The revolutions in Russia were a time of political upheaval and radical change, accompanied by the hope and optimism of a new beginning. While political power was seized by the vanguard, it was the job of the artists to imagine what the new society would look like and to awaken class consciousness in the masses. Artistic production flourished in these fertile conditions as artists and designers broke away from old paradigms, working towards an entirely novel aesthetic. Theatre, and later film, played a major role and many illustrious Russian artists of the time contributed to stage and costume design, including Alexander Rodchenko, Liubov Popova and Kazimir Malevich.

Highlights of the V&A Russian exhibition include Malevich's sketches and lithographs for the 1913 Futurist opera Victory over the Sun – precursors to his Suprematist paintings such as Black Square (1915) which have been on display at Tate Modern this summer; Rodchenko's futuristic designs for Mayakovsky's 1929 play The Bedbug; and Alexandra Exter's unforgettable costume designs for the alien overlords in 1924 Soviet science fiction film Aelita: Queen of Mars.