"Long live the Artistic Revolution!". Auction of a small avant-garde collection #568/2024

Of French origin, the word "avant-garde" was definitively connected to the artistic realm by Henri de Saint-Simon, who believed in the social function of art and saw artists as builders of a new society. The term avant-garde in art gained theoretical precision through the advanced research of Peter Burger ("Theory of the Avant-Garde", 1984), which makes a clear distinction between modernism and avant-gardism, the latter advocating for the abolition of art as an autonomous institution, separate from the everyday praxis of life. In turn, Renato Poggioli considered that artistic avant-garde was marked by four key elements: activism, antagonism, nihilism, and agonism. Furthermore, recent studies (Sascha Bru, "Historical Avant-Garde. Works on Paper", 2024) try to highlight the importance of paper in the artistic production of historical avant-garde: collages, photomontages, drawings, paper transitions from the role of material, support, to that of concept. Ideas circulate more easily on paper. Paper is easy to use, paper reaches a wider audience. Paper facilitates monochromatic linocuts.