From the Red Corner to the Green Stripe: The Colours of Ukrainian and Russian Art with Dr Rosamund Bartlett

Overview: 

This day of lectures will explore the kaleidoscope of colours in Ukrainian and Russian painting, music and applied arts. There will be a particular focus on Modernist experimentation, on Kandinsky's investigation of colour and form in The Blue Rider, for example, Sonia Delaunay's evolving use of colour as rhythm and structure, and Malevich's "New Painterly Realism of Colour".  We will also discuss the sacred significance of red in icons, Moscow's polychrome majolica, Scriabin's synaesthesia, and the fusing of invention with traditional decorative motifs which inspired the bright palette in Maria Prymachenko's paintings. 

1. Red Squares, Red Icons and Moscow Majolica

An investigation of the significance and use of red, including discussion of how Red Square and the "red corner" acquired their names, the predominance of red in Novgorod and Moscow icons, and the distinct tradition of Ukrainian "red icons". We will also look at the 17th century craze in Russia for polychrome majolica tiles, which soon covered entire walls of monasteries and churches, including St. Basil's, and how that tradition was revived in the early 20th century by Savva Mamontov, who used irridescent Art Nouveau architectural ceramics to transform the facade of the new Metropole Hotel.

2. Kandinsky and The Blue Rider

Kandinsky went to study art in Munich at the age of thirty, after training as a lawyer and undertaking an ethnographic expedition to a remote part of northern Russia.  By 1910 he had graduated from Art Nouveau to Expressionism and was creating innovative theatrical works combining colour, sound, language and movement. This lecture explores the path-breaking work of the international avant-garde group "The Blue Rider" he founded with Franz Marc in 1911. Joined by leading modernists such as Paul Klee, August Macke and Gabriele Münter, the group sought through experiments with colour and form to explore spiritual questions relating to all the arts.

3. Colour in the Ukrainian and Russian Avant-Garde

With reference to native traditions exemplified by the folk painters Hanna Sobachko-Shostak and Maria Prymachenko, and tracing a line from the early to the late 20th century, we will first seek to identify a "Ukrainian palette" in Sonia Delaunay's use of colour as rhythm and structure, Alexandra Exter's abstract colour experiments, and Oleksandr Bohomazov's vibrant canvases. We will then turn to the Russian avant-garde to explore Scriabin's synaesthetic associations of colour with music, Malevich's "New Painterly Realism of Colour", Olga Rozanova's abstract "colour-paintings" and the radical theory of "expanded vision" developed by the painter and composer Mikhail Matyushkin, beginning with his involvement with the 1913 Futurist opera Victory over the Sun and culminating in his 1932 Colour Manual.

You can book for the whole course or just individual days. 

• Thursday 29 Oct 2026 - Art and Colour in the Middle Ages 
• Friday 6 Nov 2026 - Renaissance Colour: Innovation, Theory and Practice
• Friday 13 Nov 2026 - From Caravaggio to Caspar David Friedrich: Colour in Art in the 17th and 18th Centuries 
• Thursday 26 Nov 2026 - From the Red Corner to the Green Stripe: The Colours of Ukrainian and Russian Art