Floating Worlds and Future Cities: The Genius of Lazar Khidekel, Suprematism, and the Russian Avant-Garde

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“Floating Worlds and Future Cities" presents the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States of the work of the great Russian-Jewish artist, architect, designer and theoretician, Lazar Khidekel. Khidekel worked closely with both Marc Chagall and Kazimir Malevich in Vitebsk in the years 1918-1922, where he became an important proponent and theoretician of the avant-garde movement known as Suprematism and a founding member of Unovis group (Affirmers of New Art), which included other notable Russian and Jewish artists such as Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitsky, Nina Kogan and Ilya Chashnik. This exhibition and accompanying symposium explore Khidekel’s biography and work, the Jewish contribution to the Russian avant-garde, and the glory of Vitebsk, the Paris of the East, as it was known during this period.

Speakers

Dr. Jonathan Brent, Executive Director, YIVO Institute
Opening remarks

Dr. Maria Kokkori, Research Fellow, The Art Institute of Chicago
Vitebsk Art School: Lazar Khidekel and Kazimir Malevich's teaching philosophy

Ginés Garrido, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
The Dream of Flight. On the gravity-defying nature of a new Landscape Infrastructure.

Dr. Regina Khidekel, President, Lazar Khidekel Society
Malevich, Khidekel and Vitebsk: Jewish Connections

Professor Benjamin Harshav, Yale University
Chagall, Lissitsky, and Khidekel

Professor Constantin Boym, Designer
From the Spoon to the City

Dr. Mark Khidekel, Architect
The development of Russian Avant-garde Ecological themes to solve Architectural challenges of the 21st century postindustrial civilization.