Natalya Apchinskaya

ON THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE PUSHKIN FINE ARTS MUSEUM

Natalya Apchinskaya
Caravaggio:
A New Force in European Art

#2 2012 (35)

The work of the great Italian artist Caravaggio, who lived at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, was shown for the first time in Russia, with an exhibition of 11 paintings at Moscow's Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts that opened at the end of 2011; it included some of his most celebrated works central to his heritage.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Natalya Apchinskaya
Chaim Soutine
The Pain and Beauty of the World

#4 2011 (33)

Throughout the 19th century Paris was the artistic capital of the world, and it was there at the beginning of the 20th century that the art of the new era took shape. Marc Chagall wrote that “... back then, the sun of Art was only shining over Paris”, and young artists from different countries, mostly from Eastern Europe, flocked there. That international community of outstanding artists became known as the “École de Paris” (the Paris School). Among the highlights of the “Paris School” exhibition at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Autumn 2011 was the work of Chaim Soutine (1893-1943).

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Natalya Apchinskaya
ALEXANDER LABAS:
“To See and to Understand This Mysterious and Enigmatic World…”

#1 2011 (30)

talented Russian artists of the 20th century and an outstanding figure in the Russian avant-garde art movement of the 1920s-1930s, opened on March 15 2011 at the Krymsky Val building. “I was born at a surprisingly appropriate moment, this century suits me as no other,” Labas wrote. The artist admired the achievements of modern civilisation, which he approached philosophically and which, he believed, revealed new depths in reality. The exhibition features about 150 paintings and graphic pieces from the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery, Russian Museum, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, and the Bakhrushin Theatre Museum, as well as from the private collection of the artist's heir Olga Beskina-Labas. The Tretyakov Gallery and the Foundation for the Promotion of Preservation of Alexander Labas's Artistic Legacy express their gratitude to Rosneft for its financial assistance with the project.

HERITAGE

Natalya Apchinskaya
Niko Pirosmani. “Glory to this right hand”

#1 2009 (22)

In December 2008 the Proun Gallery, at the Vinzavod Contemporary Art Centre, held a Pirosmani retrospective exhibition, the first show of the artistʼs work in Moscow for many years. Impeccably designed and staged, it featured 20 works by Pirosmani, mainly from private collections, along with supporting photographic and other visual materials. It proved a huge success with the public, which was ready to queue for some time to see it. This article is a tribute to the art of the outstanding Primitivist painter.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Natalya Apchinskaya
The Sculptor Lazar Gadaev: The Saga of Man

#3 2008 (20)

Lazar Gadayev, who is one of the most interesting and original modern sculptors of European level with a highly individual sculptural style, belongs to the generation of artists who made a name for themselves in the 1970s. His art and consummate professionalism are an integral component of the Moscow school of sculpture. Yet, the artistʼs originality is rooted in the nature and culture, ancient legends and poetry of his native Ossetia. The world of Lazar Gadayevʼs images is simple and austere: man, earth and heaven, love, passion, loneliness and compassion, despair and prayer. The maestro never fails to express very delicately all the depths of the emotional turmoil and sufferings of his characters who often conduct a voiceless dialogue between themselves. The sculptorʼs style – lean, terse, free of glitz but full of inner dynamism – accumulates the integrity of his uncompromising character. Lazar Gadayevʼs retrospective solo show, hosted last September at the Tretyakov Gallery, which is a keeper of a big collection of the maestroʼs oeuvres, covered all the stages of his creative career. It became the prominent sculptorʼs last exhibition held during his life-time.

HERITAGE

Natalya Apchinskaya
On Pavel Zaltsman Walking Through the Night...

№4 2007 (17)

A solo exhibition of paintings, watercolours and drawings by Pavel Zaltsman (1912-1985) from the funds of the Tretyakov Gallery and the collection of the artist’s family opened in October in the halls of the permanent exhibition of 20th Century Art. A disciple of Pavel Filonov, Zaltsman was never overpowered by his teacher’s influence and preserved his own artistic identity, having borrowed from Filonov the latter’s approach to the presentation of images most characteristic of the tragic collisions of the 20th century alongside basic metaphysical elements. This rather small exhibition showcased paintings, watercolours, and drawings in ink and pencil, and gave viewers an opportunity to see the main motifs of Zaltsman’s works and his creative retrospective career starting from the first professionally made drawings of the early 1920s through to the last works of the late 1980s (Zaltsman died in Alma-Ata). Pavel Zaltsman was a painter and graphic artist, as well as a cinema artist, a figure fascinated by applied Oriental art, and also an outstanding lecturer in the history of world art. Zaltsman’s prose and poetry have been unknown to the general public until recently. His literary creative experience – irrational and absurdist as it was – brought him rather close to the OBERIUT group, to Zoshchenko and sometimes even to Kafka, but even if in any case incompatible with his paintings and graphic art, it gives an opportunity to realize the inner sources of Zaltsman’s visual artistry, revealing the anti-humane nature of the 20th century.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Tatyana Yermakova
On the 120th anniversary of Alexander Volkov’s birth

Natalia Apchinskaya
The Colour of Pomegranate

№2 2007 (15)

The invitation card shows Volkov’s “Wedding” from 1927: a trumpeter in vivid red plays a triumphant, festive melody, forming a colourful trio with the two Uzbeks beside him, in blue and green. In the long row of faces, frozen in silent contemplation of the mysteries of Life, one may distinguish that of Volkov himself: second on the right, he has a more European air than the others.

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