From 30 September 2107, the General Staff building is the venue for the exhibition “Inna Olevskaya: Porcelain Metamorphoses in the Hermitage” that has been organized by the State Hermitage and the Imperial Porcelain Factory joint-stock company. The formal openin took place the day before.
The guests and participants in the ceremony were greeted by Svetlana Adaksina, Deputy General Director and Chief Curator of the State Hermitage: “Our creative and friendly contacts with the Imperial Factory are long familiar and have stood the test of time. Today’s exhibition is a confirmation of our profound friendship/”
The exhibition of works by the artist and sculptor of the Imperial Porcelain Factory, an Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation and a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts, includes more than fifty pieces. In Svetlana Adaksina’s words, Inna Olevskaya possesses special secrets of craftsmanship that allow her to create absolutely amazing works. Her porcelain compositions, combining a whole variety of techniques, are characterized by juxtapositions and allegory.
“Today is a remarkable day in the life of everyone who works with porcelain. We are opening an exhibition of an artist and sculptor, whom people call ‘an outstanding artist’, ‘a genius in porcelain’. Inna Solomonovna’s life is bound up with porcelain and today at the exhibition we are able to view the whole course, the entire history of her oeuvre,” Tatyana Tylevich, General Director of the Imperial Porcelain Factory, observed.
Inna Olevskaya said: “I am happy that you have come to my exhibition. My enormous thanks to you all. After working at the factory for so many years, I should thank the people who have helped me, first and foremost Galina Victorovna Tsvetkova [who chairs the board of the Imperial Porcelain Factory company] and Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky.” The artist stated that in her opinion they were the people who found the possibility for the factory’s artists to present their works in the halls of the Hermitage. Inna Olevskaya also expressed her gratitude to the Hermitage’s Department of the History of Russian Culture, the exhibition curator Yekaterina Khmelnitskaya, the catalogue designer Artem Tamazov, the artistic photographer Andrei Terebenin and all those who helped her in her work.
The Imperial Porcelain Factory donated to the State Hermitage the artist’s porcelain composition Journey into the Past (2012) which is featured in the exhibition.
A scholarly illustrated catalogue has been produced for the exhibition: Inna Olevskaya in the Hermitage. Porcelain Metamorphoses (Russian language, Chisty List publishing house, 2017).
The exhibition curator is Yekaterina Sergeyevna Khmelnitskaya, Doctor of Art Studies, senior researcher in the Department of the History of Russian Culture, keeper of the collection of 19th–21st-century Russian porcelain and ceramics.
