Productivist en

A trend in post-revolutionary Soviet art in the 1920s and 1930s that promoted a fusion of artistic practice and industrial production. Productivists believed that in the socialist society there had been no need in art as an autonomous practice. Art was to deal with the pragmatic and utilitarian tasks such as design of objects, training of practical skills or organization of the living environment. For productivists an artist was akin a producer and an engineer. Though Productivism is often conceived as a movement associated with the particular theorists, artists and institutions (e.g. journals Lef and Noviy (New) Lef), it was rather a broader trend followed by many artists and art collectives across the USSR, including Central Asian republics. Institutional self-organization of numerous artistic collectives into “art-factories” in which the artistic production was organized as in an industrial plant was one of the most emblematic expressions of the productional view of art.