Василий Коротеев. Сосны, 1920-е

We see the path to realization of such an art form in the balancing of form and content, or even in the complete, undivided unity of these concepts.

Form is a graphic means of understanding an image and as such is functionally dependent on the content of a painting.

A painting is a little world constructed according to laws similar to those that exist in reality and as such they are organically self-contained. An image, a chain of images, their combination, composition: this is the content of such a painting. The image, like the real world, must be internally plausible, organic and cohesive, which stems from its very essence. This applies to both living as well as dead nature.

All formal constructions are connected with a framework, whether with a conventional spatial designation or with the boundaries of this little world – the painting.

This is how balance is created between size and space and how the connection with forgotten traditions is revived.” [3]

The text of the manifesto allows us to come to the following conclusions: young artists from the second half of the twenties were called to debate and resolve the issues of creative work that lay within the interests of the thinkers of the “Russian Cultural Renaissance at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century” – N. F. Fyodorov, V. S. Solovyov, V. V. Rozanov, S. N. Bulgakov, P. A. Florensky and N. A. Berdyaev. The declaration of a break with all conditionality and of a search for realistic art sounded very commonplace for its time, resembling declarations of searches in the area of a new artistic language and the rejection of formalism, but it had a completely different, opposite meaning: realism here is the reality of a different culture and different person, of people’s new relation to themselves, their creations and their humanity. And from the viewpoint of cultural strategy what’s being discussed is an alternative direction in the development of art and the impossibility of participating in the development of its bureaucratic, depersonalized, nationalized form; what’s being discussed is the development of artistic thought in Russia in the direction of a search for art as the rules of life, as a break through appearances to the truth, as a language in which a person can voice the most internal, personal thoughts and feelings.

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[3] — Vystavka obedineniya khudozhnikov “Put Zhivopisi. Katalog. (Exhivition of Artists from the Way of Painting Artists’ Association. Pamphlet.) Moscow, 1995- Not paginated.