Contemporary Artistic Enamel: Stylistic and Innovative Development Trends

Abstract

Artistic enamel from the 1920s to the 2010s, has experienced a difficult path of development. In the early twentieth century, it represented a variety of techniques in regard to the artistic processing of metals. Today, it is an independent type of plastic arts, which synthesized both technical and technological innovations, as well as stylistic features of contemporary art and current artistic practices. In the history of artistic enamel several stages are clearly visible. The beginning of the process lies in the penetration of the principles of easel art into decorative art, which occurred in the first post-revolutionary decade due to the participation of leading masters of the Russian avant-garde in the creation of enamel works. During the second stage, the artists of the next generation attempted to combine the principles of easel painting with the national traditions that prevailed in the centers of folk arts and crafts. The third stage was inspired by the entry into the process of monumentalists and the active participation of Russian artists in international creative enamel symposia. In the fourth stage, the role of a structuring factor in the development of domestic enamel art was played by individual creative workshops that opened in different regions of Russia. Easel enamel of the 2010s is characterized by the multidimensionality of the artistic space, the creation of enamel works at the junction of different types of characteristics: both traditional and contemporary. These are classic “paintings”, panels and easel three-dimensional objects in which enamel is combined with other materials, but also monumental and decorative art objects and digital painting in enamel. Contemporary Russian art enamel represents an independent type of plastic arts, in which, in addition to traditional ones, there are numerous innovative author’s technical and technological techniques as well as methods of work.