The Zimmerli’s Russian and Soviet nonconformist art holdings contain over 22,000 objects and provide a unique overview from the fourteenth century to the present.
The Imperial era of Russian art is represented through George Riabov’s 1990 donation. This part of the collection spans styles and subjects that represent Russia’s diverse artistic heritage, genres, and visual cultures. The Zimmerli holds the largest collection in the world of Soviet nonconformist art, based on a donation from Norton and Nancy Dodge in 1991. Over 20,000 works by more than 1,000 artists reveal a culture that defied the politically imposed conventions of Socialist Realism. All media are represented, including paintings on canvas and panel, sculpture, assemblage, installations, works on paper, photography, video, artists’ books and other self-published texts called samizdat. This encyclopedic array of nonconformist art extends from about 1956 to 1986, from the beginning of Khrushchev’s cultural “thaw” to the advent of Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika. Work created during the Gorbachev era (through 1991) is also represented. In addition to art made in Russia, the collection includes many examples of nonconformist art produced in the Soviet republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. A recent generous gift by Claude and Nina Gruen extends the Zimmerli Russian art holdings to post-perestroika work produced since 1986. Many of these artworks were made by former Soviet artists now living in the diaspora.
