Down Chagall Embankment, up Kandinsky Street, right on Rodchenko, left on Lissitzky, straight along Architect Melnikov Street, then down along Brothers Vesnin Boulevard. Those kinds of directions will soon be a reality in the Russian capital. On Tuesday, 1 March, Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced that 14 new streets to be built in the vast territory of the former Soviety ZIL autoplant will bear the names of leading avant-garde artists and constructivist architects. The site is being redeveloped into an artsy neighborhood centred around a new Moscow branch of the State Hermitage Museum, so the street signs are a fitting tribute, especially since the New York-based architect Hani Rashid has said the museum’s design is inspired by the work of Suprematist El Lissitzky. But with Russian cultural officials increasingly promoting the socialist realist art that was enforced under Stalin, Sobyanin’s embrace of the avant-garde is an interesting twist.
