The Russian Empire collapsed in October 1917. Despite the chaos and famine, the young Soviet state that emerged from the ruins had a firm belief in a better future. Cultural figures, workers, and peasants alike contributed to building a new and better motherland.
Lenin declared that art belonged to the people. The now nationalized former Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, where cutting-edge artists were ordered to create new and daring porcelain art, became part of this project of popular education. This work resulted in ‘agitation’ porcelain, which better reflected the changing times, aesthetics, and ideology, while also becoming an important propaganda weapon for those in power.
Agitation porcelain was created in bleak conditions. Artists such as Kazimir Malevich and Nikolai Suetin, who worked under Sergei Chekhonin, sometimes even suffered from hunger. In 1923–24, they created their world-famous Suprematist works, including the white Malevich teapot and a semicircular cup, which are design classics today. Agit-porcelain immediately became a hot item among foreign collectors.
These pieces never became consumer goods. They were far too expensive. The porcelain produced was destined almost entirely for the use of new government bodies, with some disappearing abroad. Agitation porcelain was an important export item that earned much-needed foreign currency for sustaining Soviet citizens impoverished by war.
Vapriikki’s Let’s Create a New World! exhibition displays a large collection of agitation porcelain directly from the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Come and visit Leningrad of the 1920s, the cradle of revolution...and fascinating agitation porcelain!
The exhibition is part of a Russian-culture theme year in Tampere. In the autumn of 2011, Vapriikki will offer a number of related events. Information is available on Vapriikki’s web site, www.vapriikki.fi. This theme is also apparent in the selections of the museum’s Valssi restaurant and the Vapriikki museum shop, which offer up Russian flavours and high-quality Imperial Porcelain Manufactory reproductions, sold with exclusive rights, including new-production agitation porcelain.