Vestnik Tėii

Cover n.1, 1984. Source: Samizdat Collections, University of Toronto.

Title of the magazine:
“Vestnik Tėii” [The Messenger of the AEFA]

Date: 1984

Place of publication: Leningrad

Editors: Sergei Koval’skii, Iurii Novikov, Sergei Grigor’ev

Total number of issues: 1

Number of pages: 55

Description:
Founded in 1984 in Leningrad by Sergei Koval’skii, Iurii Novikov and Sergei Grigor’ev, only one issue of the periodical was published.  Its aim, stated on the first page, was to spread news about the Association of Experimental Figurative Arts (AEFA) (in Russian Tėii da ‘Tovarishchestvo ėksperimental’nogo izobrazitel’nogo iskusstva’), an unofficial association of non-conformist artists (the front page of the magazine asserted that the authors reserved copyright).
The first 15 pages contained shorthand notes of the agendas, discussions and decisions of AEFA meetings between 27 June 1983 and 23 February 1984. In the next section, entitled Prilozheniia (Appendices), were various kinds of documents: 1) Kommentarii k p. Khroniki (Commentary on the enclosed Chronicle) by Iurii Novikov reflecting on the meeting of 27 June 1983 at which about 60 artists were present; 2) a letter from the Union of Leningrad Artists dated 1st August 1983 addressed to Galina Pakhomova, then head of the Cultural Section of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the Communist Party, and to Marta Mudrova, then deputy director of the Central Scientific Directorate of the Leningrad Executive Committee, in which news was given of the formation of the AEFA; 3) the actual and approved variant of the statutes of the AEFA; 4) variants of the proposed statutes discussed at the meeting on 27 June 1983; 5) a letter of complaint signed by I. Borodin, Sergei Koval’skii, Iulii Rybakov dated 14 December 1983 addressed to the Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the Communist Party, V.I. Korzhov, in which the authors demanded the restoration of the paintings by the artist Orlov exhibited at the exhibition at the House of Scientists of the Polytechnic Institute “M.I. Kalinin” in Leningrad which had been confiscated by the Soviet authorities because they did not conform to the atheistic character of the initiative; 6) requests from the board of the AEFA addressed to the Central Cultural Directorate to organise both thematic and group exhibitions of artists during 1984; 7) the protocol of the discussions on the exhibition that took place from 5 to 21 August 1983 at the Palace of Culture ‘S. M. Kirov’ in Leningrad; and 8) Iurii Novikov’s article, Predvaritel’nye itogi (First Results) on the Association’s achievements in the light of the latter exhibition. There were also two anonymous articles dedicated to the August exhibition and a final essay Predlagaiu podumat’! (Invitation to Think!) by Rybakov, a balance sheet of the activities of the AEFA.
The journal probably had a second issue published in 1986, but there is no trace of it at the moment.

Notes: The journal can be consulted online at the Samizdat Collection of the University of Toronto. Original copies are kept at the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen.

Giuseppina Larocca
[30th June 2021]

Translation by Iris Karafillidis