The opening of the exhibition season this autumn is rich in events in both capitals. ARTANDHOUSES has selected the most interesting exhibitions that are worth a visit.
The Leiden collection. The age of Rembrandt and Vermeer
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, 5th September — 13th January 2019
www.hermitage.ru/en
This fantastic exhibition of a private American collection of the Kaplans was already hosted in Moscow by the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts this year. It has now moved to the Hermitage. The works of Rembrandt, Lievens and other Flemish and Dutch masters of the golden age will be complemented by works from the main Russian museum’s own collection.
Jan Lievens
«Boy in a Cape and Turban (Portrait of Prince Rupert of the Palatinate)», circa 1631
The Leiden collection, New-York
Bulgari. Tribute to Femininity. Magnificent Roman Jewels
Moscow Kremlin Museums, 7th September — 13th January 2019
www.kreml.ru
Jewels compliment the Kremlin’s still quite modest exhibition halls. The intimate surroundings can provide the perfect light around each miniature piece, and multimedia installations, if required. This season’s monographic exhibition is dedicated to Rome-based Bulgari, celebrating the famous house’s 130th anniversary. Diamond, emerald and sapphire cascades that once belonged to movie divas from all over world as well as vintage jewels, created back in the late XIX century when the house was founded, will ‘warm’ the visitors until mid-winter.
Necklace, Bulgari, 1969
Bulgari Heritage collection
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. Not Everyone Will Be Taken Into The Future
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 7th September — 13th January 1919
www.tretyakovgallery.ru
If the Leiden Collection travelled from Moscow to St. Petersburg, the exhibition of these conceptualist artists has the opposite story. It arrived at the Tretyakov gallery from the Hermitage. Some grand scale installations, depicting the soviet way of life and telling the stories of made-up heroes, will occupy the space of the New Tretyakov Gallery.
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
Installation «His Life’s Objects», 2005. Private Collection
© Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
The Fabric of Felicity
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 12th September — 27th January 2019
www.garagemca.org
How do people today perceive that someone belongs to a social group, to a trade, and in general, how do they define the level of conformity of a stranger? Yes, they judge by dress. Just as they did a hundred years ago when a philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel wrote his essay called ‘Fashion’ that became one of the starting points in preparing this exhibition. Curators aim to track the history of outfits that put people in various professional and social groups with the works of about 40 artists from all the continents, from Lyubov Popova to Kader Attia.
Ati-Patra-Ruga
«The Night of Long Knives, № 1», 2013. Photo: Heiden Phipps
Provided by the artists and WHATIFTHEWORLD gallery, Cape town
Expressionism in Russian art
The State Russian Museum, Saint-Petersburg, 20th September — 19th November
www.rusmuseum.ru
This exhibition is part of series dedicated to different trends in Russian art in the early XX century. The museum has already displayed Russian impressionism and symbolism; it now is expressionism’s turn with such bold artists as Kandinsky, Chagall, Filonov, Larionov, Grigoriev and tens of others.
Natalia Goncharova, «Washerwomen», 1911
Jim Dine. From the collection of the Pompidou Center
Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, 14th September — 11th November
www.mamm-mdf.ru
In 1962, together with Warhol, Roy Lichtenshtein and other artists, Dine participated in a legendary exhibition ‘New painting of common objects’ when American pop-art was first presented to the public. Ever since he’s been considered to be one of the founding fathers of pop art, together with fellow American artists and their British colleagues. Dine didn’t stay true to a particular style or a certain manner. He has been creating very different things that will be presented as a mini-retrospective in Moscow.
Jim Dine, «Prince», 2008
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris. Musée national d’art moderne — Centre de création industrielle
(c) Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Audrey Laurans/Dist
Contours of the Global Age
Schusev State Museum of Architecture , Moscow, 14th September — 13th November
www.muar.ru
Next year will mark the 120th anniversary of probably the most important soviet realist Alexander Deineka. His exhibitions are already a hit. The Schusev Museum of Architecture starts celebrating in advance by opening the exposition of his graphics that are just as bold as his striking paintings. The exhibition will follow a retrospective approach – and even the painter’s childhood drawings will be presented.
Alexander Deineka, «Female portrait», 1950s
Shepard Fairey. Force Majeure
Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 19th September — 4th November
www.mmoma.ru
Graffiti artist, designer, print artist and a caricaturist, Fairey seems to have worked in all creative industries. He even turned to politics – one of his most recognizable recent works was the Barak Obama ‘Hope’ poster, made in his signature pop-art style. These exact portraits made him world famous and they are the core of MMOMA exhibition.
Shepard Fairey, «Golden Future», 2018
Mikhail Larionov
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 19th September — 20th January 2019
www.tretyakovgallery.ru
Natalya Goncharova’s monographic exhibition was the Tretyakov Gallery’s tour de force in 2013-2014. Her husband seemed to have been left behind in that exhibition and in other displays of avant-garde art later on. The Tretyakov Gallery seems to be filling a certain gap by presenting the biggest retrospective exhibition of over 500 pieces from Russian museums, Tate Britain, Paris Pompidou Center and Ludwig Museum in Cologne.
Mikhail Larionov, «The Cockerel. A Rayonist Study», 1921
Tretyakov Gallery
You Are Looking at Something That Never Occurred. From Zabludowicz Collection
Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, 14th September — 18th November
www.mamm-mdf.ru
The British private collection of Poju and Anita Zabludowicz is already known across the world. They exhibited their works in museums back in late XX century and later opened their own museum in a protestant chapel in London. They bring to Moscow a smaller part of their photography collection, which will include works of such classic masters as Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Andreas Gursky, Jeff Wall and others.
Andreas Gursky, «Chicago Board of Trade II», 1999
© Andreas Gursky, Buld-Kunst, РAO, 2018
Nissky. Horizon
The Institute of Russian Realist Art (IRRA), Moscow, 14th September — 27th January 2019
www.rusrealart.ru
Soviet painter Georgy Nissky is probably one of the favorites of IRRA owner Alexey Ananyev, who paid almost $3m for his work “Over the snowy fields” at Sotheby’s. Nissky’s name is a regular reference point in collectors’ interviews and his current impressive museum retrospective as well as an amazing monographic album dedicated to the artist are a logical continuation of this admiration. The exhibition presents works collected from 23 museums and over 50 museums participated in the creation of the exhibition catalogue.
Georgy Nissky, «En route», 1958-1964, IRRA
«Les Soirees de Paris» of Baroness Oettingen. Rousseau, Modigliani, Apollinaire, Survage, Ferat
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 25th September — 13th January 2019
www.pushkinmuseum.art
More than 40 pictures and 50 drawings of avant-gardists artists who lived in Paris in the early XX century and who were close friends and companions of Polish aristocrat Hélène Miaczinska, also known as Baroness Oettingen, are exhibited in the Pushkin museum. They will arrive from the Centre Pompidou and from the Modern Art Museum in Paris. Some will be borrowed from also from a private archive of the heirs of the legendary patroness of the arts.
Juan Gris, «Still-life with a bottle», 1917
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
Vladimir Salnikov. Salvation of Spaces
Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 27th September — 28th October
www.mmoma.ru
This is the first retrospective of this modern classic’s works after his death in 2015. There will be paintings, graphics, photographs and Salnikov’s video displayed in the Petrovka museum’s space. He was one of the first media artists in Russia. The name of the exhibition comes from one of his most famous projects – an interactive installation in which the artist himself played the role of a ‘preacher’.
Vladimir Salnikov, «Dispute about art», 2009
Marcel Broodthaers. Poetry and Images
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 29 September — 3rd February 2019
www.garagemca.org
Broodthaers is well known in Europe. No big exhibition on conceptualism or surrealism runs without his works – the famous Belgian artist dedicated his life to these art movements. The Garage will exhibit a complete retrospective of Broodthaers’ works for the first time.
Marcel Broodthaers, «Magnificent Painting», c. 1963–1964. Private collection
© Estate Marcel Broodthaers
Imperial Capitals: St. Petersburg – Vienna. Masterpieces of Museum Collections
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, 5th October — 13th January 2019
www.hermitage.ru
A big exhibition that moves from Vienna to St Petersburg is based on rhythms and echoes of pieces from two great world collections of art – The Hermitage and The Kunsthistorisches Museum. Curators searched for similarities in the collections of two museums as regards artists’ names, époques’, styles and trends. So the Hermitage collection will be joined by works of Golbein, van Dyck, Altdorfer, Tintoretto, Rembrandt and Strozzi.
© KHM-Museumsverband
David Burliuk. I speak out!
Museum of Russian impressionism, Moscow, 4th October — 27th January 2019
www.rusimp.su
The museum has dedicated the exhibition to 1900-1930s, the most vibrant years of the life and creativity of David Burliuk, the avant-garde artist and the founder of Russian futurism. Paintings and graphics gathered from private collection in Russia, Europe and USA will be accompanied by multimedia installations.
David Burliuk, «Woman with mirror», 1915-1916
Ryazan State Regional Museum
Isaac Levitan and Cinematography
Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow, 4th October — 20th January 2019
www.jewish-museum.ru
The museum continues with monographic displays of Jewish descendent artists and has finally reached Levitan, whose golden landscapes are familiar even to schoolchildren in Russia. The display must be entertaining, as the museum maintains. This time curators came up with the idea of mixing the visual culture of the classical landscape with cinematography and trying to distinguish Levitan’s influence on directors, from Eisenstein to Zvyagintsev.
I.I. Levitan, «Water lilies»
Astrakhan Dogadina Art Gallery
Studying Michelangelo
State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, 5th October — 16th December
www.hermitage.ru
The works of Michelangelo are so rare in the world’s museums (there’s only one unfinished sculpture “Crouching boy” in the Hermitage collection) that any movements from their usual places are carefully monitored by art enthusiasts. That is the case now: many visitors from different countries will come to see “The Crucifix” from a private Italian collection, particularly given that this exhibition will include a draft from the British Museum.
Michelangelo, «The Crucifix»
Pablo Picasso. Olga Khokhlova
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, 20th November — 4th February 2019
www.pushkinmuseum.art
The exhibition that opened in the Picasso Museum in Paris last spring was a real blockbuster. The institution assembled for the first time a powerful collection dedicated to the Russian dancer, wife and muse of the great master. Paintings, graphics, sculptures depicting Olga Picasso or inspired by her will be displayed in the main building of Pushkin Museum.
Pablo Picasso, «Reading women», 1920
© Musée de Grenoble
The pioneers of American Modernism
The Lumiere Brothers center for photography, Moscow, 20th September — 2nd December
www.lumiere.ru
The architecture photographer Ezra Stoller, as they say, was at the right time in the right place. He was born in 1915 in the US and finished school and university in late 1930s, at the time when those who are today called ‘modernist classics’ were actively experimenting. Ezra soon realized that he wouldn’t be a good architect but he could become a good photographer who knows and feels the architecture. It seems that during his long career he took the pictures of all symbolic and important buildings created by various architects, from Mies van der Rohe to Lloyd Wright, from Aalto to Breyer. The most famous photos will be displayed in the Lumiere Brothers centre.
Ezra Stoller, «TWA Terminal at Idlewild (now JFK) Airport». Eero Saarinen. New York, NY, 1962
© Ezra Stoller, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York