Leo Tolstoy

“Reading Tolstoy” is the first exhibition of Arkady Plastov’s art to bring together almost all of his works dedicated to Leo Tolstoy and Tolstoy’s literary heritage. In November 2015 the Leo Tolstoy Museum in Moscow, the Tretyakov Gallery and members of the artist’s family contributed works to the show in the Tolstoy Centre Museum in Moscow.

Vibrant and extraordinary, Nikolai Ge’s personality fascinated his contemporaries. His image is captured in numerous portraits by two generations of artists - Ivan Kramskoi, Ilya Repin, Grigory Myasoyedov, Nikolai Yaroshenko, as well as Leonid Pasternak, Viktor Borisov-Musatov, Nikolai Ulyanov, and Alexander Kurennoi. There are also Ge’s self-portraits and photographs from different stages of his life. Many of his contemporaries left written descriptions of Ge’s appearance - the list includes his friends and students, fellow artists, and the family of Leo Tolstoy, with whom the artist became especially close during the last ten years of his life.

LATE IN 1901, MIKHAIL NESTEROV, THEN LIVING ALMOST ALL THE TIME IN KIEV, BEGAN WORKING ON HIS "HOLY RUS"' (1901-1905, RUSSIAN MUSEUM), WHILE IN ST. PETERSBURG THE RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL ASSEMBLIES STARTED GATHERING REGULARLY. AT THE ASSEMBLIES, MEMBERS OF THE INTELLIGENTSIA MET WITH THE SENIOR CHURCH HIERARCHS TO DISCUSS RELIGIOUS ISSUES OF PUBLIC CONCERN. THE ASSEMBLIES GATHERED IN THE SPACIOUS "SMALLER" HALL OF THE GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, LOCATED ON FONTANKA STREET, FREQUENTLY FILLING THE VENUE TO OVERFLOWING. THE ASSEMBLIES WERE INITIATED BY PROMINENT PERSONALITIES OF THE SILVER AGE, LIKE WRITERS-SYMBOLISTS INCLUDING DMITRY MEREZHKOVSKY, ZINAIDA GIPPIUS, ALEXEI REMIZOV; THE PHILOSOPHER VASILY ROZANOV, THE THEOLOGIAN VALENTIN TERNAVTSEV, AND OTHERS. AS GIPPIUS RECALLED, "THE FIRST REPORT [PREPARED BY TERNAVTSEV - O.A.] INTRODUCED... THE SUBJECT OF ALL FUTURE DISCUSSIONS: THE QUESTION OF CHRISTIANITY; OF ITS EFFECT ON HUMAN LIFEAND ON HUMAN SOCIETY. CONCURRENTLY, ANOTHER QUESTION AROSE, ABOUTTHE CHRISTIAN CHURCH (OR CHURCHES) - OF ITS PERCEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY."