Russian art of the Baltic countries

There are a number of successful artistic couples in 20th-century Russian art: Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Mikhail Matyushin and Yelena Guro, Natalya Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov, Alexander Drevin and Nadezhda Udaltsova, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova. Latvian art had Alexandra Belcova (Aleksandra Beltsova) (1892-1981) and Romans (Roman) Suta (1896-1944). Three years ago, in October 2008, their former apartment in Riga became a museum — due to the efforts of their daughter, Tatiana Suta, who preserved her parents’ art and, with the participation of the Latvian National Museum of Art, their vast collection of paintings, drawings and decorative porcelain can now be seen by the art-loving public.

The Latvian National Museum of Art has a branch museum, the Riga Bourse Art Museum which opened in 2011 and displays foreign art. The Riga Bourse is also home to a collection of Russian paintings, graphics, sculpture and items of applied arts, which is the largest in the Baltic countries. The history of the collection's formation dates back to the mid-to-late 19th century. Riga then had two collections of art open to the public — the Riga City Painting Gallery (since 1869) and the "Kunstverein", or the collection of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (since 1872), hosting works by Russian artists alongside works by artists from other countries. Items reached the Riga collections by different routes.

This spring Tallinn hosted a large-scale exhibition of Russian art from the mid-19th to the early 20th century from the collections of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian museums, titled "Unknown Masterpieces. Russian Art in the Collections of the Baltic Countries". In total, seven museums took part in the exhibition: the project's initiator the Art Museum of Estonia, the Latvian National Museum of Art, the Lithuanian Art Museum, the Lithuanian Theatre, Music and Film Museum, the Ciurlionis National Art Museum, the Narva Museum and the Tartu Art Museum. Conceived for the general public, it included characteristic works by famous artists, mainly paintings, complemented by some graphics and sculptures.