Brief Moment of Freedom: The Forgotten Women Behind Russia's Avant-Garde
This article examines the crucial but overlooked role of two female gallery owners, Klavdia Mikhailova and Nadezhda Dobychina, in fostering Russia's artistic avant-garde between the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. Mikhailova opened her art salon in Moscow in 1912, hosting Natalia Goncharova's first retrospective in 1913. Dobychina founded her progressive art bureau in St. Petersburg in 1911, where Kazimir Malevich first exhibited his iconic 'Black Square' in 1915. Both women came from educated backgrounds—Mikhailova from a wealthy merchant family, Dobychina from a Jewish family with more modest means. Their galleries were pioneering in a Russia that had little private art trade before 1905. The article notes that after the October Revolution, private collectors were eliminated in the USSR, and both women fell into obscurity, unable to benefit from their contributions. The piece draws on the 2021 book 'Two Women Patrons of the Russian Avant-Garde' by Natalya Budanova and Natalya Murray.
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