Marina Dmitrieva (PDF)
https://doi.org/10.53631/DIS/2017.8.4
The article discusses the architecture of peasants, particularly the rustic hut, as a model for the aesthetic and ideological programmes of some Eastern European artist colonies before World War I. It is argued that the critique of the vices of urban civilisation, influenced by the ideas of Lebensreform and the moral imperatives of Tolstoy, must be perceived as a significant element of the villages of these artists. In this context, the modest peasant log hut was perceived as the place and embodiment of a healthy life in harmony with nature. Exploring the architecture and design produced by artists in the colonies of Hungary as part of the Habsburg Empire and the Russian monarchy, including Finland, the article analyses the artistic imagination born from ethnographic studies and fed by the moral imperative to save folk art, which is under threat from industrialisation.
Keywords: Lebensreform, Tolstoy, peasant architecture, rustic hut, folk art