The timeless condemnation of war and the power that art has to always express the unspeakable in a revealing way and at the same time to give hope and function as a field of creation and survival in the darkest periods, are just some of the semiotic bases of the exhibition "Universal War. The artistic Avant-garde on the World War I front. Works from the Costakis collection" which is presented from 15 June to 25 October 2025 at MOMus-Museum of Modern Art, at the Moni Lazariston, in Thessaloniki.
On the occasion of the 111th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, the exhibition covers the period from 1914 to 1918 and explores how Avant-garde artists in Russia, responded to the greatest war in human history and its escalating outcomes until 1920.
The “Great War” was largely perceived as the final act of the Old World. World War I in the Russian Empire, as in the rest of the world, abruptly disrupted the flow of history and caused a rupture in artistic consciousness, especially in the philosophy of the avant-gardists of all forms of art. At the same time, while there were critical concerns and fear over the devastating consequences for life and the economy, artists of that time were seized by a revolutionary mentality that did not fear breaking with the past. Great samples of this artistic renaissance were artistic movements such as Cubo-Futurism, Suprematism, the early Constructivism of Tatlin, and its influence on the Dadaists were born; irrational poetic writing and atonal music also developed.
From the satirical images of 1914 to the transrational writing of Aleksei Kruchenykh and the non-objective art of Kazimir Malevich, Liubov Popova, Ivan Kliun, and others, and from the mystical writings of Velimir Khlebnikov and Pavel Filonov, aimed at exorcising war, to the tragic figures of amputee soldiers portrayed by Solomon Nikritin, the exhibition emphasizes the apocalyptic nature of the War and conveys strong anti-militarist messages.
As an epilogue to the exhibition, the work “Seeing Against Seeing” by the photographer and researcher Alexey Yurenev is presented. It is the result of a dialogue between Ernst Friedrich’s 1924 anti-war manifesto “War Against War!” —in which he compiled graphic photographs of World War I’s aftermath to expose its brutality—along with thousands of portraits from World War II era. AI trained to be fault evoke timeless portraits of war violence and evidence of the psychological terror it causes.
Curated by: Maria Tsantsanoglou, Artistic Director, MOMus-Museum of Modern Art- Costakis Collection
Assistant Curator: Angeliki Charistou, Art historian, MOMus Curator
Caption: Aleksander Rodchenko, Abstraction (Rapture), 1920, oil on canvas
ΜΟΜus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection
