EXHIBITIONS

The April Theses
22.9 > 11.11.2017

In March 1917, Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov (Lenin), leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, left his exile in Zurich. Eight months later, he assumed the leadership of 160 million people occupying one- sixth of the world’s inhabited surface. On April 9th, with the support of German authorities, at war with Russia at the time, he travelled back to his own country on a train across Germany, Sweden and Finland to reach Finland Station in Saint Petersburg on April 16th where, after a decade in exile, he took the reins of the Russian Revolution. One month before, Czar Nicholas II had been forced from power when Russian army troops joined a workers’ revolt in Petrograd, the Russian capital. In a bullet point document, known as The April Theses, Lenin called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government and outlines the strategy that, within seven months, will lead to the October Revolution and bring the Bolsheviks to power. 100 years later, Davide Monteleone created a chronology of two weeks of Lenin’s life just before the events that changed Russia and the entire world. In search of the original draft of “The April Theses”, Monteleone recreated and sometimes re-enacted, on a real and non-invented trip, Lenin’s epic journey inspired by the archival documents he found at the R.G.A.S.P.I. (Russian State Archive of Soviet Political History) and historical books including “To Finland Station” by Edmund Wilson and “The Sealed Train” by Michael Pearson. The final work is a collection of contemporary landscapes, forensic archival photographs and staged self-portraits, which retrace a journey through space and time.

The exhibition shows a selection of prints from the book “The April Theses” (Postcart 2017) presented as an installation.

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PRESS REVIEW
Davide Monteleone
The April Theses
Stockholm, Sweden - November 2016. The building where once was the PUB shopping center and where Lenin bought a suit on his way to Russia.
Davide Monteleone
The April Theses
Forest surrounding the railway around Umea, Sweden- November 2016. iLENIN#11. Landscape views.
Davide Monteleone
The April Theses
Tornio, Finland, - November 2016. The train station and the railway where Lenin crossed the border from Sweden. - November 2016.
Davide Monteleone
The April Theses
Swiss, Zurich - November 2016. The forest on the hill of Zurichberg where Lenin and his wife use to walk.
Davide Monteleone
The April Theses
Moscow, 01/2017. Newspaper archive from "State Russian Library Named After Lenin". The original copy of PRAVDA n. 26 where "The April Theses" was first published. Collections of papers 23-45 1917.
Press review