AKhRR

AKhRR. A Russian artists' association founded in Moscow in 1922. Its first group show, held in that year, was entitled ‘Exhibition of Pictures by Artists of the Realist Direction in Aid of the Starving’, but it then adopted the name Assotsiatsiya Khudozhnikov Revolyutsionnoi Rossii (Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia), which was abbreviated to AKhRR. The primary aim of its members was to present revolutionary Russia in a realistic, documentary manner by depicting the everyday life of the proletariat, the peasantry, the Red Army, and so on; in their desire for authenticity many members visited such places as factories, railway depots, and shipyards. They were fervently opposed to Futurism and other modernist trends, and stylistically were much indebted to the academic realism that had characterized much 19th-century Russian painting (see SOCIALIST REALISM). Many of the older members had indeed been brought up in this tradition, notably Abram Arkhipov (1862–1930), Nikolai Kasatkin (1859–1930), and Konstantin Yuon (1875–1958). Artists of a younger generation included Isaak Brodsky (1884–1939), Alexander Gerasimov, and Boris Ioganson (1893–1973). By the mid-1920s AKhRR was the most influential body of artists in Russia, having affiliations throughout the country, its own publishing house, and direct government support. In 1928 its name was changed to Assotsiatsiya Khudozhnikov Revolyutsii (Association of Artists of the Revolution), abbreviated to AKhR, and in 1929 it established its own journal, Iskusstvo v massy (Art for the Masses). In 1932, together with all other art and literary groups, AKhR was dissolved by Stalin.