Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Russian avant-garde was a large, influential wave of modern art that flourished in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, approximately from 1890 to 1930, though some scholars place its beginning as early as 1850 and its end as late as 1960. It encompassed movements including Suprematism, Constructivism, Russian Futurism, Cubo-Futurism, Zaum, Imaginism, and Neo-primitivism.
The Russian avant-garde clashed with the state-sponsored doctrine of Socialist Realism, which became the mandated direction in 1932. This direct conflict brought the movement's creative and popular height, which had lasted from the Russian Revolution of 1917, to a forced close.
El Lissitzky served as a key transmitter of Constructivist principles to Germany, where they were embodied in Bauhaus teaching. VKhUTEMAS and the Bauhaus operated as parallel institutions of radical pedagogy during the 1920s, exchanging publications, exhibitions, correspondence, student exchanges, and guest lectures.
Among the most prominent figures were Kazimir Malevich, who founded Suprematism; Vladimir Tatlin, whose counter-reliefs helped establish Constructivism; and El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, Liubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, and the Stenberg brothers, who shaped modern graphic design and typography. Filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, and composers Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, were also associated with the movement.
MoMA has described the work of Popova, Stepanova, Rodchenko, Malevich's pupils, and the Stenberg brothers as laying the foundations of modern industrial and graphic design. Their transfer of abstract composition into typography, photomontage, book design, textiles, and cinema posters had an important impact on European typography and layout during the 1920s.
Major collections are held at the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, the MOMus-Museum of Modern Art-Costakis Collection, and Museum Ludwig. In 2007, MoMA in New York City mounted a dedicated exhibition on Soviet avant-garde architecture featuring photographs by Richard Pare.