by Dmitry Teckel
It is impossible to perceive a city without understanding its inhabitants, and it is equally hard to fully grasp a person without knowing where they come from. In Yekaterinburg, this everyday symbiosis of people and place resulted in a powerful movement that washed away the difference between art and reality. Known as a Russian capital of street art, the city is an open gallery, welcoming anyone, be it local guerilla art groups, internationally known professionals or just a passer-by with a marker.
Ironically, this tradition of boundless self-expression is closely tied to the local history of cultural deficiency. Founded in 1723, Yekaterinburg began as a small factory town and military outpost on the very border between Europe and Asia. As for many other settlements in the Ural region, its main and only purpose was to produce enormous quantities of metal for the needs of the Russian army and fleet. Culture was never in a priority list, upheld only by a personal initiative of separate activists.
The situation changed following the Russian Revolution in 1917, when the newly formed Soviet government decided to transform Yekaterinburg into a large industrial and educational center and rename it Sverdlovsk. Colossal new factories were built along with universities, theatres, libraries and museums. The most important project of that time involved rebuilding the city in accordance with the concepts of Constructivism — an architectural movement that had a lot in common with the German Bauhaus — believing…
