Sculpture

From November 2016 to February 2017 the Tretyakov Gallery presented an exhibition of the exceptional sculptor Adelaida (Alla) Pologova (1923-2008), the Tretyakov's first solo show of the sculptor's works and the first museum exhibition since Pologova's death almost a decade ago. The exhibition "... And Keep My Trace Intact" presented 47 sculptures created throughout a career that lasted for half a century, from 1956 to 2006, of which 23 came from the Tretyakov Gallery's definitive collection of Pologova's work, and 24 from the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and private collections, including that of the sculptor's family.

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 artist’s originality is rooted in the nature and culture, ancient legends and poetry of his native Ossetia. The world of Lazar Gadayev’s 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 sculptor’s style - lean, terse, free of glitz but full of inner dynamism - accumulates the integrity of his uncompromising character.

The exhibition 'Alberto Giacometti. Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings" is the latest in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts' series of large-scale international projects, which in themselves reflect much more than ideas brought about by the long examination of its own collections. The museum researchers' inquiring minds and painstaking efforts have always been aimed at projects illustrating different stages of arts history that fill in the gaps of the museum's existing displays. Such projects introducing Modernist artists and classics of 20th-century avant-garde art have included exhibitions devoted to Pablo Picasso (the first in Russia), Amedeo Modigliani, Raoul Dufy, Joan Miro, Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Piet Mondrian, and Andy Warhol. 40 years ago such shows were a veritable cultural shock, a bold display of a different art language against the background of the 'aestheti-cized mythology" of the totalitarian state.

The 125th anniversary of Vasily Alexeevich Vatagin’s birth was marked in 2008, and proved a good reason to present the master’s work more extensively. The spectrum of his work is broad - illustrations for academic as well as art books, painting, graphic art, lithography, and sculpture. Vatagin (1884-1969) was the author of books about animals for children and adults, a museum space designer, and a teacher. He created a whole gallery of portraits of renowned men of arts and science. It is hard to believe that one person achieved all of this. He made wall-paintings on themes of zoology, paleontology and zoogeography. The State Darwin Museum collaborated with Vatagin since 1908. The museum’s galleries include more than 50 of Vatagin’s paintings and sculptures, and one may say that Vatagin’s works are exhibited in the Museum every day. But the Darwin Museum’s collections hold many more works that have not yet been shown to a mainstream audience. The Darwin Museum, together with the Tretyakov Gallery, has prepared two major exhibitions of more than 150 paintings, sculptures, and works of graphic art. Many visitors, who know Vatagin as a sculptor, will see his large-scale paintings.

The art of one of the most remarkable and brilliant Russian sculptors Anatoly Andreevich Bichukov is an example of spiritual self-sacrifice, selfless devotion to art, and the epitome of the good and the beautiful. For nearly 50 years he has been putting his talent and sense of purpose in the high service of art. A graduate of the Moscow State Art Institute, now the Surikov Art Institute (MGAKhI), where he became a dean several years ago, Bichukov, as early as his college days, won reputation as a singular personality passionately dedicated to art