"Electrification. 100 Years of the GOELRO Plan"

On August 10, the Museum of Moscow opens the exhibition “Electrification. 100th Anniversary of the GOELRO Plan ”. This memorable date became an occasion for the museum curators to talk about how the electrification of the country influenced the Soviet avant-garde: visual arts, cinema, architecture, music, theater, literature and design. The exhibition will feature works by Alexander Labas, Alexander Deineka, El Lissitzky, Gustav Klutsis, Alexander Rodchenko, Sergei Luchishkin, Kliment Redko, Solomon Nikritin, Joseph Chaikov, Nathan Altman, Robert Falk, Olga Rozanova, the Vesnin brothers, Andrey Burov, Yakov Chernikhov, Ivan Zholtovsky and Alexander Gegello.

Electricity became the hero of stories, plays, children’s stories, posters, movies, and also appeared in graphics, painting and sculpture. His image was embodied in the form of an incandescent lamp, power lines receding into the distance, powerful turbines of power plants and was identified with the figure of Lenin himself. It was at this time that the myth of the leader was formed, carrying new energy, new light and new world. Each of the artistic associations of the avant-garde era found its own source of inspiration in the GOELRO theme. Thus, the images of electric lamps, turbines and power lines were combined in the posters of the constructivists Gustav Klutsis, Sergei Senkin, El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko. The projectionists worked with the contrasts of glowing metaphysical lamps, lines, shapes and surrounding darkness. OST members explored new images of the city and village landscapes,laced with lines of wires and rhythmic rows of pillars.

The exhibition space will turn into a total audio and light installation, which was made by video artist, director, architect and set designer Dina Karaman for the Museum of Moscow. It will be divided into several zones - "Light", "Current", "Stations", "Lines", "City", each of which will tell about how electrification in its various manifestations was reflected in art and literature. Between the zones, "towers" will be built dedicated to individual electrifiers - Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, Alexander Winter, Heinrich Graftio, Robert Klasson. Here it will be possible to study documents and photographs dedicated to their lives and the main creations: the Shaturskaya and Kashirskaya TPPs near Moscow, the north-western Volkhovskaya and Svirskaya hydroelectric power stations, and, of course, the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Station - a symbolic construction of avant-garde architecture and a symbol of electrification. The figure of Lenin,reflected in the collages and photomontages of the constructivists, posters and books, sculpture and graphics will occupy a separate "tower". The dramatic plot of the creation of the Moscow Electric Lamp Plant will become the last, sixth "tower" of the exposition.

Curatorial group: historian of architecture, senior researcher of the Museum of Moscow Alexandra Selivanova, historian and art critic (gallery "On Shabolovka") Katerina Telegina.

Consultant: HSE architecture historian, employee of the Mosenergo Museum Yulia Shulenina.