History and Culture: Exhibition “Borders of the XX Century. Selected works from the collections of the Samara Art Museum” opened in Moscow

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents the exhibition Borders of the XX Century from the collections of the Samara Art Museum, marking the 125th anniversary since its establishment.

This section of the Samara Museum’s collections contains over five thousand works, not presented in the main exposition. There are featured works of the avant-garde era, as well as of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods by such remarkable artists as Nadezhda Udaltsova, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Alexander Samokhvalov, Pavel Korin, Yury Pimenov, Gely Korzhev, Arkady Plastov, Ely Belyutin, Yury Zlotnikov and others.

The exposition in the MMOMA is displayed in chronological order. It vividly shows all movements of Russian art of the XX century, its metamorphoses and transitions from one decade to another. Starting from the avant-garde, legendary Jack of Diamonds and Blue Rose, the art of the XX century is continued by the work of representatives of the early Soviet art associations – OST and AKhRR, which were engaged in painting with the characters of a new country. It was replaced by the well-established rhetoric of Soviet realism, within which the art of the Great Patriotic War occupies a special place. During that period, the official art was contrasted with the more intimate, sometimes naïve works of regional artists.

The Thaw period of the 1960s is characterized by the “harsh style” seen in the works of Geliy Korzhev, Pyotr Ossovsky and others, as well as by the unofficial art, one of the representatives of which was Ely Belyutin. The MMOMA exposition includes his works, made in the abstract expressionism style and gifted to the Samara Art Museum by his widow, art critic Nina Moleva. The diversity of genres in the collection of the Samara Art Museum is also noteworthy – every period is captured in landscape paintings, still lifes, portraits and mundane scenes, associated with the spirit of the time.

Since the beginning of the XXI century, the collections of the museum have been entered by works of modern artists. Creators of the first works, featured in the collection, were participants of the Shiryayevo Biennale, which is held in a small village of Samara Region since 1999. In 2004, after the conclusion of the Venice Biennale, the museum acquired works of Valery Koshlyakov, Konstantin Zvezdochyotov, Sergei Bratkov, Vladimir Dubosarsky and Alexander Vinogradov, previously exhibited in the Russian pavilion “The Return of the Artist”.

Through the complete retrospective of the XX century, the Samara Art Museum demonstrates the masterpieces of its collections in the MMOMA and at the same time reflects the characteristic trends of the development of Russian art of the period.

The Samara Regional Art Museum is one of the largest museums of the Russian province. This is the oldest and the most prestigious exhibition site in Samara Region. The museum was founded in 1897 on the initiative of Samara artists, lead by Konstantin Golovkin. The museum’s building, constructed in the early XX century, is an architectural monument of federal significance. It is one of the most beautiful and most recognizable constructions of Samara, located in the historical centre of the city. Currently, the museum’s collection contains over 18 thousand works of Western and Russian art from the main holdings, covering the period from the late XVI to the early XXI century. The museum maintains close ties with domestic and foreign museums, cultural centers and collectors.