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Russian Art at the Hermitage: Famous and Forgotten
Masters from the 19th to the first quarter of the 20th century On 18 October 2007, at the Hermitage-Kazan Exhibition Centre at the Kazan Kremlin State Historical and Architectural Museum and Park an exhibition was opened including approximately 200 paintings, prints, sculptures and pieces of decorative applied art. Such a large exhibition of Russian art of the above period from the State Hermitage Museum collection has never been on public display before. Many of the exponents of the exhibition are on display for the first time and are little known not only to the general public but also to specialists. The desire to choose the very best examples from among the tens of thousands of paintings, sketches, water-colours, prints and sculptures created by Russian artists determined the guiding principle for selecting items for the Kazan exhibition: one item of each of the masters was chosen which best demonstrated his individuality. In this way, the exposition represents practically all the trends in Russian fine arts from the 19th to the first quarter of the 20th century. The classical canvases of Àlexey Yegorov and Fedor Matveev, portraits of Iosiph Oleshkevich, sculptures of Ìichail Kozlovsky and Boris Orlovsky executed in the empire style coincide with the work of romanticism artists Orest Kiprensky, Àlexander Varnek, S. Shchedrin, Karl Brullov and the realist works of Serguey Zaryanko, Ivan Kramskoy, Vassily Perov, Mark Antokolsky, and others. It is the first time that works from the State Hermitage Museum's collection, of leading masters from the first quarter of the 20th century, have been put on public display. These masters include Valentin Serov, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Ìichail Vrubel, Leonid Pasternak, Serguey Sudeykin, and Alexander Benois. Among those works specially chosen for this exhibition are twenty-six water-colours and sketches - the outstanding works of Vassily Sadovnikov, Vladimir Gau, Grigory Chernetsov, Peter Sokolov, Fedor Bruni, Pavel Chistyakov, Ìichay Zichy. The sculptural section consists of works of Fedor Tolstoy, Ivan Vitaly, Peter Klodt, Michail Mikeshin, Pavel Trubetskoy, and Vladimir Beklemishev among others. Sitting side by side with the names of renowned artists are also the works of forgotten masters (artists M. Golovanov, A. Gein, A. Golubtsov, F. Strechkov; sculptors A. Werner, U. Svirskaya; printers M. Kurilko, L. Belousov), which enables us to take a new look at the traditional history of Russian art and to add and expand our knowledge of more than a century's artistic development. Another important theme of the exhibition is that of the Russian collectors. This theme is reflected in the portraits of famous collectors (Grigory Kushelev, members of the Yusupov family) and in exhibited works taken from their collections. Examples of decorative applied art compliment the exhibition - products from the Faberge and Meltser companies, the Imperial Porcelain Factory, the workshops of the Gambs Brothers, which were carried out to the designs of Karl Rossi, Stepan Pimenov, Pavel Kamensky, Àlexandra Shchekotikhina-Pototskaya and many others. An academic, illustrated catalog has been prepared for the exhibition (Slavia Publishing House), which includes a preface written by the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Culture of the Tatarstan Republic Zila Valeeva, the Director of the State Hermitage Museum, Michail Piotrovsky and an article by the exhibition curator, Yury Gudymenko, a senior scientific researcher of the State Hermitage Museum. |
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Copyright © 2011 State Hermitage Museum |
