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VKhUTEMAS By Vronskaya, Alla G.
Article
VKhUTEMAS was a school of arts and architecture in Moscow between 1920 and 1927. Similar ‘‘art and technical studios’’ existed in other Soviet cities. VKhUTEMAS was supervised by Narkompros (the ministry of culture), particularly by the commissar (minister) of culture, Anatolii Lunacharskii, and became the center of developing and propagating modernism in Soviet Russia. VKhUTEMAS emerged as a result of a post-Revolutionary reconstruction of the pre-existing system of art education: it replaced Moscow Svomas (Svobodnye gosudarstvennye khudozhestvennye masterskie [Independent State Art Studios]) which, in turn, was formed in 1918 on the base of the pre-Revolutionary Stroganov Art School (First Free Art Studio) and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (Second Free Art Studio). It continued to be restructured and renamed a multitude of times. VKhUTEMAS, and its next reincarnation VKhUTEIN, were headed by painter and sculptor Efim Ravdel’’ (1920–1923), graphic artist Vladimir Favorskii (1923–1926), and critic Pavel Novitskii (1926–1930).