The Russian Avant-Garde began in Russia in about 1915. It was the year that Malevich revealed his Suprematist compositions that reduced painting to total abstraction and rid the pictures of any reference to the visual world. He is credited with being the first artist to do this; that is, forsake the...

The French Revolution sought to destroy entirely the institutions of the ancien régime. Whilst its success in doing so is debatable, there is little doubt that this was the aim of the revolutionaries. The reasons for this goal are numerous, but certainly their ambition for destruction is ...