Floating Worlds and Future Cities: The Genius of Lazar Khidekel, Suprematism, and the Russian Avant-Garde

(NEW YORK, March 28, 2013) – “Floating Worlds and Future Cities" will present the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States of the work of the great artist, architect, designer and theoretician, Lazar Khidekel (1904-1986). Lazar Khidekel worked closely with Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich in Vitebsk in the years 1918-1922, where he became an important proponent and theoretician of the avant-garde movement known as Suprematism and a founding member of the UNOVIS group (Affirmers of New Art), which included other notable Russian and Jewish artists such as Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitsky, Nina Kogan and Ilya Chashnik. This exhibition and accompanying symposium and catalog will explore Khidekel’s biography and work, the Jewish contribution to the Russian avant-garde, the glory of Vitebsk (“the Paris of the East,” as it was known during this period), and focus on Lazar Khidekel's role in the transition of Suprematism from painting to architecture, cosmic urbanization, and radical yet environmentally conscious city planning of the future.

Curated by Dr. Regina Khidekel, the exhibition will include paintings, drawings, period photographs, UNOVIS documents, publications and letters drawn from the Khidekel Family Archive, as well as architectural models.

Works of Lazar Khidekel were shown in the U.S., Europe and Russia, including solo exhibitions in Magnes Museum in Berkeley, 2004, and in Haus Konstruktiv and The Leuenhof, Zurich, 2010-2012.

Lazar Khidekel’s manifesto “AERO. Articles and Projects”, Vitebsk, 1920, has been included in the “Timeline” of the Haus Konsstruktiv's “COMPLETE CONCRETE” exhibition on the 100 years of development of constructivist, concrete and conceptual art and its effect on the present.

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011
Sunday, April 21, 2013 | 3:00pm
Symposium, Exhibition Opening & Reception
Exhibition on view through July 30, 2013

About Lazar Khidekel Society: Founded by the family of Lazar Khidekel and a group of distinguished art historians, museum specialists, and art supporters under the auspices of the RACC in New York, the Lazar Khidekel Society aims to sustain and preserve Lazar Khidekel's legacy in art, architecture, and design, and to advance through research, publications and exhibitions, the recognition of Lazar Khidekel (1904, Vitebsk – 1986, Leningrad), as one of the titans of the Russian Avant-garde, particularly the Suprematist movement, that laid the foundation for art and architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries.

More about: Lazar Khidekel | Lazar Khidekel Society

Contact the Lazar Khidekel Society at: russculture@aol.com | (646) 831-0554

About the Symposium

Speakers:

Dr. Jonathan Brent, Executive Director, YIVO Institute
Opening remarks

Dr. Maria Kokkori, Research Fellow, The Art Institute of Chicago
Khidekel and Malevich’s teaching philosophy and Vitebsk art school.

Ginés Garrido, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
The Dream of Flight. On the gravity-defying nature of a new Landscape Infrastructure.

Dr. Regina Khidekel, President, Lazar Khidekel Society
Malevich, Khidekel and Vitebsk: Jewish Connections

Professor Benjamin Harshav, Yale University
Chagall, Lissitsky, and Khidekel

Professor Constantin Boym, Designer
From the Spoon to the City

Dr. Mark Khidekel, Architect
The development of Russian Avant-garde Ecological themes to solve Architectural challenges of the 21st century postindustrial civilization.