Russian graphics of the early 20th century. Russian graphics of the late XIX - early XX century. Interior in Russian graphics of the 19th - early 20th century

Exhibit period 30.08.2016-28.11.2016 Venue
Moscow

The State Historical Museum for the first time presents a graphic collection of interior views, which is one of the largest in Russia. The exhibition presents about 60 works made by both recognized masters of the interior genre and lesser-known artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Spectators will see the interiors of imperial and grand-ducal palaces, urban and rural estates, St. Petersburg and Moscow mansions, as well as the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin and St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg.
The interior theme appeared in Russian art at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, but became most widespread in the second quarter of the 19th century, mainly in painting. The views of living rooms, studies, classrooms and children's rooms painted by artists have become important iconographic documents of the era, allowing you to recreate the everyday environment and trace the influence of architectural styles on the interior decoration of houses.
By the middle of the 19th century, in the era of historicism, the interior theme gained particular popularity. During this period, brilliant graphic artists worked - E.P. Gau, L.O. Premazzi, A.A. Redkovsky, V.S. Sadovnikov, K.A. Ukhtomsky, I.I. Charlemagne, who depicted in their works numerous rooms of imperial residences and noble estates.
In the third quarter of the 19th century, the interior genre in photography took shape. However, unlike watercolors, photography was unable to convey the color of richly decorated rooms. This is what led to the popularity of watercolor views in the late, "photographic" era.
Drawings created at the beginning of the 20th century are distinguished by a stylistically different manner. In the era of “retrospective dreamers”, “documentary” views are replaced by the author’s view: the interiors are not seen as a whole, but as separate picturesque “cropped” compositions (for example, pastels by A.V. Sredin).

Author, master
Unknown artist
Name
Study-living room in the house of M.T. Pashkova on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg
Place of creation

Dating
1830s

Room of the artist P.F. Sokolov in the house of P.V. Nashchokin in Vorotnikovsky Lane in Moscow. Sokolov P.F. 1791-1848. 1824

Classroom in an unknown mansion. Rustman. 1827

A suite of rooms with a birdcage in the foreground in an unknown mansion. Unknown artist. 1830s

A suite of rooms with trellis in the foreground in an unknown mansion. Gagarin G.G. (?). 1810-1893. 1830s-1840s

Author, master
Bestuzhev Nikolai Alexandrovich
Name
Volkonsky's cell in the Petrovsky Zavod prison. View towards the door
Place of creation
Russian empire
Dating
1830s

Author, master
Efimov Nikolay Efimovich
Name
The auditorium of the theater in the house of Prince G.I. Gagarin in Rome
Place of creation

Dating
About 1830

Author, master
Efimov Nikolay Efimovich
Name
Office of V.P. Davydov with the artist K.P. Bryullov at work in the Davydovs' house in Rome
Place of creation
Western Europe, Italy, Rome
Dating
1835

Author, master
Zaitsev P. G.
Name
Living room of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna in the Small Nicholas Palace in the Moscow Kremlin
Place of creation
Russian Empire, Moscow
Dating
1836

Author, master
Obach Johann Kaspar
Name
Interior view of the house church at the Russian embassy in Stuttgart during the service (?)
Place of creation
Western Europe, Germany
Dating
1840s-1850s

annotation
Manor Zavalino (Alexandrovsky district, Vladimir province) from the 18th century. belonged to the noble family of the Akinfovs. In the middle of the 19th century, after the death of Senator F.V. Akinfov (1789-1848), the estate passed to his only daughter and heiress E.F. Akinfova (1821-1892) and her husband N.I. Krusenstern (1802-1881), son of Admiral I.F. Kruzenshtern (1770-1846), who made the first Russian round-the-world trip in 1802-1806.

Author, master
Zalessky Yakov
Name
Room E.I. Nelidova in the Smolny Monastery in St. Petersburg
Place of creation
Russian Empire, St. Petersburg
Dating
1839

The collection of domestic graphics of the late 19th–20th centuries in the Sergiev Posad Museum-Reserve is small in volume, less systematic and complete than its pictorial collection of this period. But it has its own artistic significance in the general museum complex.
The specificity of the museum's graphic collection (as well as the pictorial one) is the predominance of works by local artists and a certain thematic focus associated with the iconography of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and the city. A special part of it is made up of individual sheets (rarely - cycles of works) by famous masters of the domestic fine arts - I.I. Shishkina, B.M. Kustodieva, K.S. Petrova-Vodkina, V.A. Favorsky, T.A. Mavrina and others (about 80 works).

The first steps towards the formation of the collection were taken at the very beginning of the museum's activity - in 1920-1921: more than 30 graphic works of local artists were purchased from the "Exhibition of Architectural Motifs" of TSL.
The most valuable part of the collection is the acquisition as a gift and the purchase of graphic works from private individuals. In this way, the works of I.I. Shishkina, B.M. Kustodieva, V.A. Favorsky, L.S. Bakst. "Names" (I. Repin, V. Makovsky, I. Shishkin, K. Korovin, etc.) are "named", but represented by single works. The "personalia" of Russian graphic art in the museum collection is essentially the same - T.A. Mavrina (the collection of SPMZ allows us to show her work in development, from the 1940s to the 1970s, using the example of the best works). Nevertheless, for the "provincial" collection of art of the late XIX-XX centuries, individual works of classical artists are extremely valuable.

The earliest examples of printed graphics in the complex of works we are considering date back to the 80s of the 19th century. They are associated with one "personality" - a landmark and significant in the history of Russian engraving of this period - I.I. Shishkin (1832 1898).
Recall that the 1870s was a period of transition and "transition" for Russian printed graphics, the time of the dominance of tone engraving. But even in this not the most creative period there were genuine virtuosos of woodcuts (V.V. Mate) and etching (I.I. Shishkin). Our collection contains four etchings by the artist, created by him in the 1880s (a period that was especially fruitful in Shishkin's work). These are the sheets "Gurzuf" (1885), "Black Forest" (1885), "April" (1885), "Swamp on the Warsaw Railway" (1886), brilliant in their craftsmanship and subtlety of conveying the state of nature. The museum's collection also contains drawings by famous Russian painters, such as the itinerant artist Vladimir Yegorovich Makovsky (1846-1920) and Valentin Alexandrovich Serov (1865-1911). Portraits of V.E. Makovsky, made in the drawing, are just as impeccable in composition and completeness as his oil paintings. Being a portrait master, V.E. Makovsky had the talent to accurately convey not only the external resemblance of the person being portrayed, but also the features of his spiritual movements, highlighting those main character traits that determine a person’s actions, his thoughts and feelings. Valentin Serov, like any real artist, worked remarkably well not only in oil painting, but masterfully mastered the technique of drawing. His numerous works in pencil and charcoal have the same vivacity and accuracy in conveying the character of the people depicted, the same perfection of execution as his oil paintings.

The museum collection contains several works by famous Russian artists of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. This is, first of all, a drawing by Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910), the largest representative of symbolism and modernity in Russian fine art. Along with the sheets of L.S. Bakst and M.A. Vrubel, the heyday of Russian graphics at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries and the 1910s is represented by the work of K.A. Korovin (1861-1939) - a sketch of the scenery in 1917 for the opera by N.A. Rimsky Korsakov "Sadko". This sketch is the only "surviving" example of theatrical scenery graphics. Stylistically, our sheet is close to a number of theatrical works by K. Korovin of the late 1900s-1910s. K. Korovin's sketches for "Sadko" in 1906, 1914 are distinguished by a more complex compositional construction, they include not only the image of "Chorus", but also an open terrace, through the spans of which a landscape is visible - "sea blue". Our sheet has a chamber sound: it represents the interior of the chamber with a high vault, small windows, a tiled stove and benches.
The museum's graphic collection also has a small drawing by Ilya Efimovich Repin "Portrait of the Writer Leontiev-Shcheglov". I.L. Leontiev-Shcheglov (1856-1911) - a talented Russian writer and playwright

Graphic sheets B.M. Kustodiev in the collection of the Sergiev Posad Museum-Reserve are three linocuts of 1926 (signed, dated by the author), received in 1928 from a private collection. In the artist's work, graphics occupied a large place, although he was, for the most part, a painter. In the 1920s, Kustodiev did a lot of book illustrations, posters and easel engravings (woodcuts, lithographs, linocuts). In 1926 B.M. Kustodiev created several compositions with "Bathers" in the techniques of linocut, woodcut and watercolor. In the diary entries for 1926 of the first biographer Kustodiev V.V. Voinov (graphic artist, art historian, art critic) constantly hears the theme of Boris Mikhailovich's work on linocuts "Bather" and "Bather". A constant model in the last years of B.M. Kustodiev "for portraits, characters in paintings, covers, engravings, illustrations" was his daughter Irina. She posed for her father and for the engraving "Bather".
Over a series of "Bathers" B.M. Kustodiev worked, in the literal sense of the word, until the last days of his life: the last engraving of this cycle was made by him on May 4, 1927 (and on May 26 the artist died).

The work of one of the outstanding figures of Russian art of the 20th century, a classic of woodcut V.A. Favorsky (1886-1964) is represented in the museum collection by sixteen graphic sheets from different periods: these are easel works, book illustrations, and samples of his "type graphics".
The choice of sheets is largely random, not all of them are first-class or iconic works of the master. In 1919-1939 members of this family (including Vladimir Andreevich Favorsky) lived in Sergiev Zagorsk, were rooted in its spiritual and cultural life, created many of their works here, and father-in-law V.A. Favorsky was one of the organizers of our museum.
Among them is one of the most famous, significant works of this period of the master's work - easel engraving "October 1917" 1928. This woodcut was created by the first state order of the Council of People's Commissars for the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution. Then Favorsky conceived the series "Years of Revolution", where "drawings arranged in chronological order were supposed to recreate the entire history of the Soviet state for the first 10 years year after year." The woodcut "October 1917" is a detailed plot-narrative and, at the same time, symbolic, metaphorical composition with many characters and several episodes, quite organically merged into one.

The late period of V.A. Favorsky in our collection are engravings from his best, most famous cycles of the 1950s, for which the artist was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1962 - illustrations from 1950 for "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" and for "Boris Godunov" in 1955 ., donated to the museum in 1965.
They perfectly demonstrate the "late style" of Favorsky's woodcuts, where more attention is paid to the appearance of the characters, the setting, the costume, where pictorial means naturally change: a certain "painterly" comes to replace the asceticism of graphic solutions with outlines and open shading. The epic solemnity, the epic nature of the "Word" sound in full weight in the multi-figure composition ("Before the Battle"), in which Favorsky includes images of Russian soldiers under the battle banner and Guslyar. From the variety of graphic cycles V.A. Favorsky in the 50s to the dramaturgy of A.S. Pushkin ("Boris Godunov", "Little Tragedies") in the museum's collection there is only one illustration for the tragedy "Boris Godunov" - "Pimen and Grigory" 1955.

The collection of works by the outstanding domestic graphic artist and painter Tatyana Alekseevna Mavrina in the Sergiev Posad Museum-Reserve in terms of volume, level of works, their genre diversity can only be compared with the largest museum collections in the country that have collections of graphics of the 20th century. (GMIII, State Tretyakov Gallery, State Russian Museum). These are sixty-two sheets that came to us in 1977-1978 after the author's personal exhibition at the museum. Forty-five works were given to T.A. Mavrina as a gift.
Chronologically, the collection of Mavrinian works covers a large period of the artist's work (the latest dates are 1944 and 1976; moreover, an approximately equal number of sheets refers to the periods of the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s). It represents a sufficient variety of graphic techniques in which Mavrina worked fruitfully: these are watercolors, gouaches, sheets made in mixed media (tempera, gouache or tempera, gouache, watercolor), pencil drawings, ink drawings.

"Zagorsk cycle" T.A. Mavrina, clearly expressing her worldview, priorities in art, her unique style, often and rightly called "Mavrinsky", began to take shape in the 1940s. The "plot series" of the Mavrinian works of the 50s is the "fabulously seen" ensemble of the Lavra, the Pyatnitsky Monastery, the old city and the life of its inhabitants - everyday and festive, embodied in its special, metaphorical and poetic key, associated with the figurativeness of folk art, folklore. Equally expressive and free, bold in drawing, composition, and color are the sheets of the 1960s and 1970s. Their thematic composition is still dominated by genre landscapes, in the very titles of which the active-domestic aspect is emphasized. The classic example of the "Mavrinian portrait" in our collection is "Demidova" 1973. "Demidova" is a wonderful example of the organic combination of two genres - "portrait in landscape": a large, frontal, half-length image of a "Russian old woman" in a white scarf against the background of a summer village landscape, where, according to the ancient tradition of folk paintings and popular prints, inscriptions are given on the images themselves.

Despite the controversial nature of this association, in a number of areas its masters achieved serious success. The merits of the "World of Art" in the development of graphics, in the struggle for a high culture of book design are indisputable. The second generation of "World of Art" is less busy with the problems of easel painting, their interests lie in graphics, mostly book. In the second generation of "World of Art" there were major individuals (Kustodiev, Sudeikin, Serebryakova, Chekhonin, Grigoriev, Yakovlev, Shukhaev, Mitrokhin, etc.).

First generation:

The ideological leader of the "World of Art" was Alexander Nikolaevich Benois (1870-1960).

Benois the illustrator (Pushkin, Hoffman) is a whole page in the history of the book. Unlike Somov, Benois creates a narrative illustration. The plane of the page is not an end in itself for him. The illustrations for The Queen of Spades were rather complete independent works, not so much the “art of the book”, as A.A. Sidorov, how much "art is in the book." A masterpiece of book illustration was the graphic design of The Bronze Horseman (1903,1905,1916,1921–1922, ink and watercolor imitating colored woodcuts). In a series of illustrations for the great poem, the main character is the architectural landscape of St. Petersburg, now solemnly pathetic, now peaceful, now sinister, against which the figure of Eugene seems even more insignificant. This is how Benois expresses the tragic conflict between the fate of Russian statehood and the personal fate of a little man.

The leading artist of the "World of Art" was Konstantin Andreevich Somov (1869-1939). Somov owns a series of graphic portraits of his contemporaries - the intellectual elite (V. Ivanov, Blok, Kuzmin, Sollogub, Lansere, Dobuzhinsky, etc.), in which he uses one general technique: on a white background - in a certain timeless sphere - he draws a face, a resemblance in which it is achieved not through naturalization, but by bold generalizations and apt selection of characteristic details. This lack of signs of time creates the impression of static, stiffness, coldness, almost tragic loneliness. He designed S. Diaghilev's monograph about D. Levitsky, the work of A. Benois about Tsarskoye Selo. The book, as a single organism with its rhythmic and stylistic unity, was raised by him to an extraordinary height. Somov is not an illustrator, he “illustrates not a text, but an era, using a literary device as a springboard,” wrote A.A. Sidorov, and this is very true.

The third in the core of the "World of Art" was Lev Samuilovich Bakst (1866-1924). He came to the "World of Art" from the Academy of Arts, then professed the Art Nouveau style, joined the leftist trends in European painting. At the first exhibitions of the World of Art, he exhibited a number of pictorial and graphic portraits (Benoit, Bely, Somov, Rozanov, Gippius, Diaghilev), where nature, coming in a stream of living states, was transformed into a kind of ideal representation of a contemporary person. Bakst created the brand of the magazine "World of Art", which became the emblem of Diaghilev's "Russian Seasons" in Paris. Bakst's graphics lack 18th-century motifs. and estate themes. He gravitates towards antiquity, moreover, to the Greek archaic, interpreted symbolically.

Yevgeny Evgenyevich Lansere (1875 - 1946) devoted a lot of energy and attention to this specific art. Russian literary illustration did not know before such a wealth of pictorial motifs in their harmonious connection with the book and the book page, did not achieve such a skillful combination of content and decorativeness of the drawing, the high culture of the book, which was achieved by the best graphics of this period. One of Lansere's best creations - 70 drawings and watercolors for L.N. Tolstoy's "Hadji Murad" (1912-1915), which Benois considered "an independent song that fits perfectly into Tolstoy's powerful music." Lansere created a number of watercolors and lithographs of St. Petersburg (Kalinkin Bridge, Nikolsky Market, etc.). Architecture occupies a huge place in his historical compositions (“Empress Elizaveta Petrovna in Tsarskoye Selo”, 1905, State Tretyakov Gallery). We can say that in the work of Serov, Benois, Lansere a new type of historical painting was created - it is devoid of a plot, but at the same time it perfectly recreates the appearance of the era, evokes many historical, literary and aesthetic associations.

The graphics of Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky (1875–1957) represent not so much Petersburg of the Pushkin era or the 18th century, but a modern city, which he was able to convey with almost tragic expressiveness (“The Old House”, 1905, watercolor, State Tretyakov Gallery), as well as a person - inhabitant of such cities (“The Man with Glasses”: a lonely, against the backdrop of dull houses, a sad man, whose head resembles a skull). The urbanism of the future inspired Dobuzhinsky with panic fear. He also worked extensively in illustration, where his series of ink drawings for Dostoevsky's White Nights (1922) can be considered the most remarkable.

For some "World of Art", however, the first Russian revolution was a real revolution in their worldview. The mobility and accessibility of graphics caused her special activity in these years of revolutionary turmoil. A huge number of satirical magazines arose (380 titles were counted from 1905 to 1917). The Sting magazine stood out for its revolutionary-democratic orientation, but the largest artistic forces were grouped around the Bogey and its Infernal Mail supplement. The rejection of autocracy united liberal-minded artists of various trends. In one of the numbers of the Zhupel, Bilibin places a caricature "Donkey in 1/20 life size": in a frame with attributes of power and glory, where the image of the king was usually placed, a donkey is drawn. Lansere in 1906 prints the cartoon "Feast": the tsarist generals in a gloomy feast listen not to singing, but to screaming soldiers standing at attention. Dobuzhinsky in the picture “October Idyll” remains true to the theme of the modern city, only ominous signs of events burst into this city: a window broken by a bullet, a lying doll, glasses and a blood stain on the wall and on the pavement. Kustodiev made a number of caricatures of the tsar and his generals and portraits of the tsarist ministers, Witte, Ignatiev, Dubasov, and others, exceptional in their sharpness and malicious irony, whom he studied so well while helping Repin in his work on the State Council. Suffice it to say that Witte under his hand appears as a staggering clown with a red banner in one hand and the royal flag in the other.

But the most expressive in the revolutionary graphics of those years should be recognized as the drawings of V.A. Serov. His position was quite definite during the revolution of 1905. The revolution brought to life a whole series of Serov's caricatures: “1905. After the Pacification” (Nicholas II, with a racket under his arm, distributes St. George's crosses to the suppressors); "Harvest" (rifles are laid in sheaves on the field). The most famous composition in this series is “Soldiers, brave kids! Where is your glory? (1905, Russian Museum). Serov's civic position, his skill, observation and wise laconism as a draftsman were fully manifested here. Serov depicts the beginning of the Cossacks' attack on the demonstrators on January 9, 1905. In the background, the demonstrators are given in a general mass; in front, at the very edge of the sheet, large - individual figures of the Cossacks, and between the first and the background, in the center - an officer calling them to attack on horseback, with a saber drawn. The name, as it were, contains all the bitter irony of the situation: the Russian soldiers took up arms against their people. So it was, and so this tragic event was seen not only by Serov from the window of his workshop, but also (let us say figuratively) from the depths of the liberal consciousness of the Russian intelligentsia as a whole. Russian artists who sympathized with the revolution of 1905 did not know what cataclysms of national history they were on the verge of. Having taken the side of the revolution, they preferred, relatively speaking, a terrorist bomber (from the heirs of nihilist raznochintsy, "with their skills in political struggle and indoctrination of broad sections of society," according to the correct definition of one historian) to the policeman, standing on the protection of order. They did not know that the "red wheel" of the revolution would sweep away not only the autocracy they hated, but the whole way of Russian life, the whole Russian culture, which they served and which was dear to them.

The turn of a new artistic era was marked by the activity of the great master, who in many respects stood alone in the art of his time - the Spaniard F. Goya. A brilliant painter, he turned to engraving already at an advanced age, after 50 years, and probably became the first artist after Rembrandt, in whose hands etching turned out to be not a peripheral, chamber art form, like most of his contemporaries, but a powerful means of staging and resolution of the most important creative and social problems of the time. Linking the graphic culture of the 18th and 19th centuries, Goya rises above both. Completing and transforming the essential lines of development of creative engraving of the 16th-18th centuries, he anticipates those new trends that will develop decades later.

The first large series of his aquatint etchings was made in the second half of the 1790s. and was called "Caprichos". This word (although not in Spanish, but in Italian transcription) we have already met in the history of graphics. "Caprici", i.e. “quirks”, “fantasies”, are in essence the designation of a special genre of fictional, arbitrarily arranged images (as opposed to authentically natural or canonical in plot), to which many masters of European graphics paid tribute - from Callo to Tiepolo and Piranesi: lively, light, sometimes decorative in design, elegantly mannered sketches with a needle.

With Goya, everything turned out to be much more serious and deeper. The emotional structure of his fantasies is gloomy, sometimes tragic. There is no cross-cutting plot in this cycle, although some groups of sheets are united by a certain semantic similarity. The themes of individual compositions arise unpredictably, alternate according to complex associative links. Meanwhile, the series, unlike the traditional "capricci", is felt as a developing, internally integral narrative, a kind of graphic "novel in etchings". The most fantastic images are born from the midst of direct everyday observations. Life is drawn into a powerful stream of reflections and experiences of the artist and is transformed in it: the customs and vices of society and its estates, popular superstitions, the brutal cruelty of the authorities, church and secular. Everything that can embody his feelings is put into action: everyday scene and allegory, merciless grotesque, deformation, fabled substitutions of a person for an animal (monkey, donkey) or an unthinkable monster. The strange, many-sided world of "Caprichos" is united by a characteristic condensed-shimmering atmosphere, now dense and mysterious, now somewhat enlightened. To create it, the master masterfully used the then-new aquatint technique. The quivering, vibrating etching stroke of Goya also communicates its unsteady mobility to his characters. It has nothing in common with the cold smooth lines of classicism that dominated European graphics at the turn of the century.

Short signatures on the sheets are also openly emotional. They contain the direct voice of the artist, his gloomy-ironic intonations, his exclamations, often mournful. Without interfering with the purely plastic expressiveness of the etchings, they activate literary, plot drama and the ambiguous symbolism of the images in them. Goya himself is constantly present in his etchings, addresses the viewer directly, looking for complicity and sympathy in him. It is no coincidence that the introductory sheet to the series is the artist's self-portrait, which very accurately corresponds to its spirit with its psychological tension and restrained drama. The second series of etchings by Goya - "The Disasters of War" (1810-1820) was started a decade later by "Caprichos", among the dramatic events - the capture of Spain by Napoleon's troops and desperate popular resistance. The mutual fury of the fighters, leading people to brutality, execution, torture, violence overwhelm these etchings. “I saw this”... “And this too,” the artist writes under his sheets, demanding that we also see what is “impossible to look at”...

But in this series, as well as in Caprichos, monstrous images of reality, bloody and heinous episodes of military everyday life are intertwined with fantastic and grotesque images, with the tragic symbolism of Goya, are generalized and comprehended through it. A horse fighting off a pack of wolves with its hooves, an ugly chronicler of the war with claws on his arms and legs and bat wings instead of ears ... “The truth is dead” is the name of the penultimate leaf with a cloud of ghosts over the body of a young woman. "Will she rise again?" - asks the artist in the latter. Many themes of "Caprichos", the darkest themes of lawlessness and deceit, the domination of evil passions and prejudices again, with new energy, Goya repeats in this series. The dusk of a vague background is even thicker in it, tangles of tangled bodies are inseparable in dynamic compositions, the furious expression of an etching needle breaks all the norms of traditional drawing. And, finally, in Goya's late album "Disparates" - "Follies" (1818), the artist's tragic fantasy is generalized, gets a gloomy majestic sound. Powerful impulses come from Goya's etchings in the graphics of the 19th and 20th centuries; a generation later - to the romantic fantasy of lithographs by E. Delacroix, to the satirical pathos of O. Daumier; after a whole century - to an explosion of passions in the engravings of German expressionists, to the social tragedy of K. Kollwitz, to the passionate impulses of E. Barlach.

Tomorrow an exhibition opens in Torzhok, in which the history of the development of the so-called "formalist" graphics of the first half of the 20th century is illustrated by the works of A. Labas, V. Lebedev, M. Axelrod and other famous Russian artists

All-Russian Historical and Ethnographic Museum, June 1 - August 1, 2012
Tver region, Torzhok, square 9 January, 2, exhibition hall

Tomorrow, June 1, at the All-Russian Historical and Ethnographic Museum, the Vellum Gallery opens the exhibition Traditions of Russian Graphics of the 20th Century. 1900-1950s”.

The exhibition will feature works by A. V. Fonvizin, A. A. Labas, V. V. Lebedev, A. F. Sofronova, A. I. Vatagin, A. M. Kanevsky, M. M. Axelrod and A. L. Kaplan, A. S. Konovalova, B. A. Smirnov-Rusetsky, E. F. Ermilova-Platova. The exposition illustrates the history of the development of the so-called "formalistic" graphics in the first half of the 20th century.

At the beginning of the 19th century, collections began to form in Russia, in which the graphic works of artists were collected along with their paintings. Famous painters were ordered watercolor and pencil portraits, living rooms were decorated with landscapes executed on paper.

The connection of graphics with other spheres of culture was flexible and versatile. As an illustration, she had direct access to literature, book and publishing, as a sketch of scenery - to the theater, as a project - to architecture, applied arts and various spheres of human activity.

Michelangelo believed that drawing is the highest degree of achievement for a painter, a sculptor, and an architect, and drawing is the source and soul of all kinds of fine arts.

The twentieth century in Russian culture is also marked by the outstanding achievements of artists in the field of graphic art. The collection of graphics of the 20th century is the largest section in the holdings of graphics of the Tretyakov Gallery. Easel and sketchiness, fixation of what he saw or pure fantasy, an illustration to read, a blank for an engraving or a project for a theatrical costume, a caricature exaggeration or a detail isolated from the whole, mediate and predetermine the style of a graphic work.

Exhibition “Traditions of Russian Graphics of the 20th Century. 1900–1950s.” continues a series of expositions of the gallery "Vellum" in provincial museums; it was preceded by shows by artists of the old Russian school in the Murom Art Museum, the Rostov Kremlin, the Marc Chagall Museum in Vitebsk.

Organiser of the exhibition:
Moscow cultural institution "Gallery" Vellum ""
Tel.: +7 (495) 776–33–31; 695–13–53 (ext. 147)
Email: [email protected]
www.vellum.ru

All-Russian Historical and Ethnographic Museum (Torzhok)
www.viemusei.ru

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