Lilya Brik: Style Icon and Muse of the Avant-Garde

Exhibition Co-Organisers: V. V. Mayakovsky State Museum, V. I. Dal State Museum of the History of Russian Literature

As part of the 2026 Photobiennale, the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow presents the exhibition “Lilya Brik: Style Icon and Muse of the Avant-Garde”, dedicated to the 135th anniversary of Lilya Brik’s birth. It was to her that the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky dedicated his most famous works: “A Cloud in Trousers”, “The Backbone Flute”, “Lilichka! Instead of a Letter”, and many others. She was the wife and muse of Osip Brik, a highly influential theorist of the Russian avant-garde, and also one of the main models of constructivist photographer Alexander Rodchenko. The exhibition, which includes photographs from the 1910s to the 1970s, Rodchenko’s photo collages for Mayakovsky’s poem “About This”, posters and film clips, will showcase Lilya Brik as one of the most striking figures of 20th-century Moscow bohemia.

Countless publications have been written about Lilya and her life, shrouded in speculation and myths that were often self-created, remains the subject of heated debate and discussion. Lilya Brik masterfully crafted her image as a femme fatale, perfecting even the smallest detail. For example, she deliberately painted the walls of her room ultramarine to complement her porcelain skin, fiery red hair and brown eyes. Brik was always dressed in the latest fashion: she used the services of dress-designer Nadezhda Lamanova, who supplied outfits to the Imperial Court before the Revolution. She also received new styles from her sister, the writer Elsa Triolet, wife of the poet Louis Aragon, in Paris, and frequently travelled abroad.

In 1928 Lilya Brik wrote to Mayakovsky, asking him to bring her a Renault from France. She became one of the first women to get behind the wheel, which was rare in those years. “Lilya Yurevna’s enthusiasm for the “Renoshka” was unconditional and true to character. She sewed a special dress and suit for motoring, as well as ordering a hat and gloves from Paris,” wrote Vasily Katanyan, the author of a memoir about Lilya. In 1929 Brik, Rodchenko and Mayakovsky’s driver set off in the new car on a trip from Moscow to Leningrad, but poor roads forced them to turn back halfway. Rodchenko’s famous photographic series “The Journey That Never Happened” will be shown at the exhibition.

Lilya Brik was not only a fashionista and socialite, but also a far more complex and multifaceted personality. She ran one of the most renowned literary-artistic salons of the early 20th century, attended by prominent poets, writers and artists such as Mikhail Kuzmin, Viktor Shklovsky, Nathan Altman, Boris Grigoriev and David Burliuk. In 1918 she played the lead role in the film “Chained by the Film”, based on a screenplay by Mayakovsky, and in 1929 she directed the film “The Glass Eye”, for which she herself wrote the screenplay. Brik was fluent in German and French, translated plays, short stories and novellas, and was passionate about sculpture. She was remembered as someone who could “persuade and puzzle with an opinion never heard before, one that was her own, not taken from the street or from authorities”.

Lilya Brik was a congenial reader and conversationalist, and for this reason artists not only of her generation, but from subsequent generations too, paid attention to her. Regulars at her home included Andrei Voznesensky, Maya Plisetskaya, Rodion Shchedrin, Mikael Tariverdiev, and other heroes of modern times.

МАММ is grateful to the following for providing exhibits:

V. V. Mayakovsky State Museum and personally its Director, Marina Krasnova;

V. I. Dal State Museum of the History of Russian Literature and personally its Director, Dmitry Bak;

Archive of Stepanova-Rodchenko, and personally Alexander Lavrentiev;

Alexander Dobrovinsky.