Art in Motion: Raketa’s New Avant-Garde
Joining the abstract and artistically-inspired Avant-Garde line today is the Avant-Garde 0279 Limited Edition. Raketa'‘s vision for the watch is to bring modern tastes with Russian Avant-Garde art. On the heels of the Big Zero Malevich, it’s obvious that Raketa is choosing to highlight non-traditional artwork that Russia has celebrated for centuries.
When one gazes upon the ivory-white dial of the new limited edition, the most immediate thing noticed is the stark contrast of shapes and angles. The idea is to juxtapose many clashing ideas into a single streamlined visual product. Raketa says this visual was inspired by 20th century artists such as Malevich and Kandinsky who dabbled with strange, large, and colorful abstract shapes all over their paintings. The dial itself is circular with triangles, smaller circles, arrows, and an aggressive typeface that at first glance seems to be a cacophony of discord. It’s only when one examines the works of Malevich and Kandinsky that it becomes apparent how this watch falls directly into their traditions of bizarre avant-garde artworks. Looking at the strap we can see circles trapped inside a rectangle. The strap has a demanding visual presence with bright red stitching and rally-style cutouts that reveal a red toned mid-leather sandwiched into the strap’s construction.
It was the assertion of these artists that the image was free of distraction (despite its cluttered nature) as one was free to interpret the art for what they saw within it, not some hidden intention of the author. In the same way Raketa challenges their audience to find meaning within the constantly changing landscape of their Avant-Garde Limited Edition. The owner’s mood and imagination coupled with the change in time of day will result in a never ending series of paintings they can wear proudly on their wrist.
This limited edition is restricted to 300 pieces and is based upon the existing Avant-Garde models from their “Curiosity” collection. The ways it differs from their existing series production Avant-Garde watches is:
The black PVD case
Its colorful abstract strap
A fully open caseback
The fine detail printing on the 2615 movement housed within
To those unfamiliar with the model we will decode the dial for you:
There are 3 geometric shapes that move around the dial. The large red triangle represents the hour of day, the circle shows the wearer the minutes and an arrow quickly sweeping around the dial indicating the seconds within each minute.
The text shown between 4:00 and 5:00 reads “Made in Russia” in Cyrillic.
The price is Euros 1.125 EUR (without VAT) with free delivery worldwide.