Bulldozer Exhibition
The Planierraupenausstellung (Russian Бульдозерная выставка ) was one of the most famous and important public actions of unofficial art in the USSR.
Organized by the Moscow avant-garde artists, they took place in the Moscow outskirts Beljajewo, at the intersection of Profsojusnaja and Ostrowitjanowstraße on 15 September 1974.
The exhibition was attended by artists who do not respect the official doctrine of socialist realism.
The initiators were the art collector Alexander Gleser and thirteen Moscow painters Oskar Rabin and his son Alexander, Valentin Vorobyov, Jurij Scharkich, Vitaly Komar, Alexander Melamid, Lidja Mastjerkowa, Vladimir Njemuchin, Yevgeny Ruchin, Vasily Sitnikov, Igor choline, Boruch Schtejnberg and Nadjeschda Elskaja. Later still connected to other painters.
The images were placed on makeshift easels from waste wood. In addition to the Moscow audience including journalists western news agencies published.
The authorities reacted violently: published Within half an hour hundred militiamen dressed in civilian clothes, three bulldozers and water cannons. It was staged a spontaneous protest a group of outraged workers who opposed the illegal exhibition. The attackers destroyed the pictures and beat participants, visitors and journalists. Many were arrested.
Having appeared on the destruction of the exhibition news in the world press, the authorities were forced to make concessions and allowed a similar exhibition two weeks later on 29 September 1974 in Izmailovo. The exhibition lasted four hours and was attended by about 1500 people. In the foreign media, this exhibition was called " a half-day freedom."
The Planierraupenausstellung is considered the main Russian avant-garde performance art since 1962, when Nikita Khrushchev was closing the exhibition " New Reality " in the Moscow Manege.
Socialist realism as the official doctrine dominated Soviet art until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
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