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Union of Youth [Rus. Soyuz Molodyozhi].
Association of Russian avant-garde painters, active in St Petersburg from 1910 to 1914. It was financed by the businessman Lerky Zheverzheyev, who was also its president. The core of the group comprised the artists Pavel Filonov, Ol’ga Rozanova, Iosif Shkol’nik (1883–1926) and Eduard Spandikov (1875–1929) and the painter and art critic Vladimir Markov (Waldemar Matvejs, 1877–1914). The musician and painter Mikhail Matyushin and his wife, the poet Yelena Guro (1877–1913), were also associated with the group, as were the artists Kuz’ma Petrov-Vodkin (in 1910), Jean Pougny (1912–14) and Natan Al’tman and Ivan Klyun (both 1913–14). The Union functioned principally as an exhibiting society, holding five annual exhibitions in St Petersburg and one in both Riga and Moscow. A reaction against the conservatism of the contemporary art and exhibition societies, Union of Youth was the first major organized group of young avant-garde painters in Russia. Members of the Union had a rather free aesthetic ideology in distinction to other groups of the period (such as Donkey’s Tail) and painted in a variety of styles. Pavel Filonov’s Neo-primitivism and Rozanova’s Cubo-Futurism with Rayist elements typified the breadth of stylistic aspirations within the group. The Union was a microcosm of the rich and varied picture of Russian avant-garde art in the pre-war years.
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