Varvara Keidan Shavrova reviews Joy Gerrard and Paula Rego's exhibition at Cristea Roberts Gallery, London

"ONE DAY IN 1932, the Russian avant-garde artist, Vladimir Tatlin, walked out of his studio at the Novodevichy Convent in the centre of Moscow. He made his way to a field in the nearby countryside where he tested his bird-like flying machine, Letatlin. Tatlin’s aim was to offer the ordinary person unlimited mobility, to reclaim the skies and promise a functional everyday vehicle for the cities of the future. The artists of the Russian Revolution – Rodchenko, Malev- ich, Tatlin, Stepanova, and Lissitzky – saw the birth of human avi- ation and flight as synonymous with the birth of a new proletarian world order that demanded revolutionary, new art. The visions of the artists and the architects of the Soviet avant-garde were cast towards the skies, while the Russian Cosmists sought to free the human spirit from the binding pull of gravity......"