Hermitage Days 2022 On 3 December 2022, an exhibition will begin its run in the General Staff building devoted to one of the leading artists of the Russian avant-garde – Nikolai Suetin. A man of great and wide-ranging talents, he made an appreciable mark on painting, design and architecture, but it is porcelain that first comes to mind at the mention of his name. The State Hermitage, together with the Imperial Porcelain Factory joint-stock company is presenting the project Crocus, timed to make the 125th anniversary of Suetin’s birth. Specially for this occasion, the factory’s present-day artists have recreated and painted a vase with the Crocus shape. The exhibition display will include sheets of graphic art carrying designs produced in the course of this creative action, as well as variants for the painted decoration of the vase executed on porcelain. The project demonstrated an organic combination of the traditions of Suetin’s school of porcelain and the innovations of today’s craftspeople – the striving after unique visual solutions.

“The Eastern Wing of the General Staff building is a laboratory of new tendencies in museum practice. The exhibition about Suetin’s Crocus is the history of a single shape and a detailed account of how porcelain, an elite among elite art forms, saved the essence and spirit of Suprematism, and in doing so turned into an art form for the people,” Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, commented.

Nikolai Suetin was one of the foremost artists of Malevich’s circle. While a loyal follower of his teacher, he retained his own brilliant individuality, succeeding in creating an original version of Suprematism that had a substantial influence on the “industrial art” of the post-revolutionary years.

In late 1922, Suetin began working at what was then the State Porcelain Factory as an artist-composer. Exploiting the contrast between the “endlessly white” expanse of the porcelain and colour determining the rhythms of geometric shapes, he applied Suprematism to the painted decoration and introduced Suprematist shapes into porcelain.

In 1932, on the recommendation of the Leningrad Artists’ Union, Suetin was made artistic director of the State Porcelain Factory (later the Leningrad Porcelain Factory named after Lomonosov) where he worked until the end of his life. All this time, Nikolai Suetin was consistently introducing the principles of Suprematism into the work with porcelain. For over two decades, he was a mentor, educator and friend to the young artists, teaching them to set themselves a compositional task and solve it in accordance with their conception.

In 1935, Suetin created a tea service and accompanying vase intended for mass production. The clear, concise shape was given the name Crocus explaining the association with that flower invested in its geometry. Suetin’s service is functional, suitable for use in daily life. Its creator’s individual vision of Suprematism is present in each of the pieces – a striving to humanize non-figurative art, to combine rigid lines and soft shapes. The grasp of the material, the precisely judged proportions of the faceted shapes, the austere elegant sculptural quality of the pieces ensured them a future with large production runs and many alternative kinds of decoration. The Crocus vase, created as part of an ensemble, stands as a work of art in its own right independent of the service. Its shape was used for decades as a “canvas” for different painted finishes.

Nikolai Suetin’s creative legacy played an enormous role in the formation of a school of artistic porcelain. His “Suprematist lessons” have not lost their edge or relevance for today’s craftspeople, in whose works bold searchings after something new do not erase traditions.

The artists of the Imperial Porcelain Factory joint-stock company who participated in this project are Tatiana Afanasyeva, Vera Bakastova, Vladimir Bogdanov, Yulia Zhukova, Maria Matveyeva, Sergei Rusakov, Sergei Sokolov, Mikhail Sorokin, Anna Trofimova, Nina Troitskaya, Liubov Tsvetkova, Violetta Shal and Yulia Shargina.

The curator of the exhibition in Inna Maistrenko, senior researcher in the Museum of the Imperial Porcelain Factory, a department of the State Hermitage, and keeper of the collection of contemporary porcelain.

The Hermitage exhibition “Crocus. Return. To Mark the 125th Birth Anniversary of Nikolai Suetin” can be visited by holders of tickets to the General Staff building until 26 February 2023.