Vladimir Markov and Russian Primitivism: A Charter for the Avant-Garde

This volume introduces the Latvian artist and champion of artistic change in early twentieth-century Russia, Voldemārs Matvejs (Vladimir Markov), as a pioneering art photographer and assembles for the first time five of his most important essays. This book challenges hardening narratives of primitivism by reexamining the enthusiasm for world art in the early modern period from the perspective of Russia rather than Western Europe. The book will appeal to students of modernism, orientalism, ‘primitivism,’ historiography, African art, and the history of the photography of sculpture.