MODERNISM AND WORLD REVOLUTION

MODERNISM AND WORLD REVOLUTION

Group Exhibition featuring Shengtian Zheng, Jingbo Sun, Jiawei Shen

Hosted by IAC at Western Sydney University & Rochfort Gallery

Hosts: IAC at Western Sydney University, Rochfort Gallery
Sponsor: Huang Miaozi Yu Feng Charitable Foundation
Producers: Jiawei Shen, Jing Han
Academic Consultant: Yiyang Shao
Symposium Moderators: Jing Han, Shuyu Kong
Exhibiting Artists: Shengtian Zheng, Jingbo Sun, Jiawei Shen

Exhibition and Symposium on Modernism and World Revolution
Introduction
Jing Han, Director & Professor of Institute for Australian and Asian Art and Culture at Western Sydney University

The intricate relationship between modernism in art and Marxist world revolution remains one of the most compelling and complex narratives in twentieth-century art history.
Following the October Revolution of 1917, Anatoly Lunacharsky, a Russian writer and revolutionary, was appointed by Lenin to head the Commissariat for Enlightenment (Narkompros). He appointed leading modernist artists, including Wassily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Kazimir Malevich and Alexandra Exter, to state positions and allocated public funds to acquire avant-garde works, establishing pioneering museums dedicated to modern art. In 1919, Vladimir Tatlin was commissioned to design the Monument to the Third International, an enduring icon of Constructivism.
In the 1930s, modernism and revolutionary politics converged again in opposition to fascism. Picasso's Guernica became a powerful indictment of fascist atrocities. Meanwhile, in Mexico, Leon Trotsky, André Breton and Diego Rivera co-authored Towards a Free Revolutionary Art, advocating artistic freedom and opposing totalitarianism of both the left and right.
After the Second World War, artists including Picasso and Fernand Léger joined the French Communist Party, while Renato Guttuso in Italy and Hans Erni in Switzerland contributed to the period's politically engaged art. Mexico and Latin America became centres of the Modern Mural Movement, shaped by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Frida Kahlo's art also achieved international recognition. In Spain, Antoni Tàpies aligned himself with communist sympathies, while Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York amid debates about art and left-wing intellectualism. As Cold War tensions eased, modernism re-emerged across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union before flourishing in China during the 1980s.
This historical intersection continues to inspire artistic and scholarly inquiry. In 2017, Vancouver-based artist and curator Professor Shengtian Zheng organised Winds from Fusang: Mexico and China in the Twentieth Century at USC Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, exploring Mexican and Latin American influences on Chinese art from the 1930s to the 1970s. In 2023, Sydney-based painter Shen Jiawei completed The Tower of Babel, an ambitious four-part mural examining the twentieth-century international communist movement and the tensions between modernist art and revolutionary ideology. The documentary Welcome to Babel, directed by James Bradley after twelve years in production, premiered at the 2025 Sydney Film Festival and won Best Documentary.
Building on this rich history, the exhibition and symposium Modernism and World Revolution explore the complex intersections of artistic modernism, political ideology and revolutionary aspiration, drawing particularly on The Tower of Babel, including Utopia, and Winds from Fusang. Other featured works by Shen Jiawei include Homage to Frida (2026), Russia 1917 (2013), Spain 1937 (2012) and Peking Treaty (2006), alongside Sun Jingbo's The World Wants Peace (2025).