French Impressionism and Russian Avant-Garde Painting in 1920s and early 1930s. Analysis and Synthesis

In 1920s many Russian avant-garde artists, like their European counterparts, started rethinking aethetic attitudes. An intention to create an ultimately new “mono” style of painting, like cubism or suprematism, was transformed into a completely different approach: the merging of a varying range of influences. The French Impressionism revival gives a vivid example of that process. This style once again became the source of inspiration and, most importantly, among such prominent modernists as K. Malevich, V. Lebedev, A. Leporskaya, who were rigorously tracing it's essence in their works. Yet this “analytical” research resulted in an artistic “synthesis” of a variety of styles of the present and the past, French Impressionism duly included. Through controversial combination of analysis and synthesis the artists were elaborating a highly individual and cultivated new manner of painting.