"Days of the avant-garde 2021. NEP"

On May 14, the opening of the festival will take place in the courtyard of the Museum of Moscow with a performance by a noise orchestra led by Peter Aidu. The musicians will perform the authentic repertoire of the 1920s on instruments recreated from the samples of that time. Then the guests of the evening will see a collective performance by the students of GITIS, theater artists and curators of the festival, Marina Krasnova and Alexandra Selivanova, dedicated to the creative union of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and the artist Alexander Rodchenko. The program will end with a screening of the cult film "Aelita" by Yakov Protazanov in 1924, accompanied by a piano and a theremin. Also, throughout the evening, an avant-garde market will work and children’s master classes will be held.

“The Museum of Moscow has been working with the avant-garde theme for several years. In 2019, we began to study it at the Moscow Fabrics exhibition, where avant-garde textiles occupied an important place. In April 2021, the exhibition "VKHUTEMAS 100. School of the Avant-garde" ended in honor of the centenary of the country’s main avant-garde institute - the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops. And the logical development of this theme was our participation in the festival "Days of the Avant-garde", which will open on May 14 at the Museum of Moscow. In addition, this year the festival is dedicated to NEP, an important and interesting era for our city, with which it is very interesting for us to work, ”says Anna Trapkova, director of the Museum of Moscow.

“The annual festival“ Days of the Avant-garde ”this year is being held for the fifth time and for the first time on such a scale: more than ten venues will host lectures, master classes, film screenings, a music program and much more. This is a big step forward for the Moscow Exhibition Halls Association, since the festival was included in the list of citywide events in the city. Today the culture of the avant-garde is attracting more and more interest among the townspeople, therefore, when forming the program, we tried to take into account the widest possible audience. Gallery "On Shabolovka" has long been a recognized expert in the subject of the avant-garde and the main point of study of this period on the map of the capital, therefore it is difficult to overestimate the great importance of the festival for the popularization of the history of the city and the cultural image of Moscow ",- comments the director of the Association "Exhibition Halls of Moscow" Ksenia Faresova.

“Every year more and more Muscovites begin to appreciate the heritage of the avant-garde - the architecture of constructivism, art, design, cinema and theater of the 1920s, which do not lose their sharpness and relevance today. Our festival, which will be held for the fifth time this year, has played an important role in this. Excursions, exhibitions, concerts and lectures this time will cover a lot of points in the city, which means, we hope, will attract new spectators and participants! " - says the curator of the festival Alexandra Selivanova.

Throughout the festival, lectures, excursions around Moscow and film screenings are planned. Detailed schedule and links to registration on the festival website.

Free admission

Curators of the festival: the historian of architecture, curator of the Avant-garde Center and the Gallery "On Shabolovka" Alexandra Selivanova, head of the department of the State Museum of Art and History named after V. I. Dahl "House of I. S. Ostroukhov in Trubniki" Marina Krasnova, musician and teacher of the Moscow Conservatory Petr Aidu, philologist, Yan Levchenko, a culturologist and professor at the Higher School of Economics.

Organizers: The Moscow Exhibition Halls Association, the Na Shabolovka Gallery and the Avant-Garde Center.

Partners: State Museum of the History of Russian Literature named after V. I. Dal, Cultural Center ZIL, Museum Association “Museum of Moscow”, educational project “Moscow through the eyes of an engineer”, Museum “Moscow Lights”, Central Universal Scientific Library named after N. A. Nekrasov, Project "1931", research project "MosPromArt", Cultural project "Nowhere Except", State Museum of the History of the Gulag, Museum of M.A.Bulgakov, State Museum of V.V. Mayakovsky, State Museum of Architecture named after A.V.Shchusev, State Fund films of the Russian Federation.