Project for the creation of a multimedia CD-ROM in the State Hermitage Collections series From the Impressionists to Picasso

The State Hermitage presented the CD-ROM From the Impressionists to Picasso produced with the financial support of the ABN AMRO Bank. This colourful multimedia album devoted to the Hermitage's superb collection of French 19th- and 20th-century art features more than 200 works of art. These include canvases by the leading Impressionists, masterpieces by CŮzanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso and other famous figures of the period.

The CD-ROM offers various approaches to the material through sections entitled Works, Artists, Tendencies and Collectors.

The Works section is the hub of the whole structure. Its contents are intended to enable the user to view a painting, read a written commentary on it, determine its relationship to one tendency or another, and to read about the artist or collector.

One of the most import and interesting aspects of the album's subject matter is the unparalleled creation in Russia at the turn of the 20th century of the earliest collection of contemporary and near-contemporary French art. The biographies of the Russian art-lovers and patrons who played the most significant role in the formation of this collection are included in the Collectors section.

The Artists section presents the biographies of thirty figures whose work shaped French artistic culture in the later 19th and early 20th centuries and made it a phenomenon of world importance.

The user can learn more about the artistic trends and tendencies in French art by selecting the Tendencies option in the menu.

Thematically selected slide shows illustrate the main sections of the disk. Users can form their own virtual collections by using another of the built-in functions.

The CD-ROM is to be produced in two languages — Russian and English and is aimed at a wide circle of Russian and foreign users. The version presented on 18 October was non-commercial. The release of the commercial version of the disk is planned for December 2001. By then the album will be enhanced by accounts of the masterpieces in the Hermitage collection and a musical accompaniment for the slide show.

Director of the Hermitage Mikhalil Piotrovsky at the press-conference

CD-ROM
From the Impressionists to Picasso
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