The centenary of the GOELRO electrification plan gave the museum an opportunity to examine electricity’s influence on the Soviet avant-garde across visual art, film, architecture, music, theatre, literature and design. The exhibition includes work by Alexander Labas, Alexander Deineka, Gustav Klutsis, Alexander Rodchenko, Sergei Luchishkin, Kliment Redko, Solomon Nikritin, Joseph Chaikov, Nathan Altman, Robert Falk, Olga Rozanova, the Vesnin brothers, Andrei Burov, Yakov Chernikhov, Ivan Zholtovsky and Alexander Gegello.
The State Commission for the Electrification of Russia, known as GOELRO, was established in March 1920 on Vladimir Lenin’s instructions. Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, Robert Klasson, Heinrich Graftio and other engineers developed a national plan for power stations and electrical infrastructure. Although it built on pre-revolutionary proposals, the plan became a visible symbol of the revolution. The new network transformed industry, daily life and how people imagined the future.
Electricity became a subject in fiction, theatre, children’s books, posters and film, as well as in graphic art, painting and sculpture. Artists represented it through light bulbs, power lines and turbines, and sometimes identified it with Lenin himself. Constructivists such as Gustav Klutsis, Sergei Senkin, El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko combined these motifs in posters. Projectionist artists explored sharp contrasts between luminous forms and darkness, while members of the Society of Easel Painters depicted cities and rural landscapes crossed by wires and rows of poles.
Video artist, director, architect and set designer Dina Karaman transformed the Museum of Moscow galleries into an immersive sound-and-light installation. The exhibition was divided into five zones – Light, Current, Stations, Lines and City – tracing the impact of electrification on art and literature.
