This year marks the 350th anniversary of the birth of the Russian Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725). Among the many events commemorating this significant date, the State Hermitage Museum prepared a monographic exhibition called “Exotic and Lavish China. Knowledge of the Orient” (which ran from April 19 to June 12, 2022). For the first time, the unique exhibits preserved by the State Hermitage and directly related to Peter I and his associates were presented in such a configuration. Accompanying the exhibition is an edition that reflects the history of the Chinese collections in the Hermitage at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries, as well as the development of Oriental studies and museum work in the Russian Empire. Many documentary exhibits are published for the first time, and their history has only been recently studied.

The exhibition “Natalia Goncharova. East and West” at the Tretyakov Gallery casts light on many aspects of Goncharova’s artistic development, including the influence of Paul Gaugin on her early works. The 1989 exhibition “Gauguin. A View from Russia” at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts had already afforded an opportunity to explore the impact of the French master’s paintings on the Russian artist, but the new show offers a wider perspective on the subject.

“Bathing the Horses” is one of the most important works that Arkady Plastov (1893-1972) accomplished in the decade of the 1930s. Created for the 1938 “Exhibition on the 20th Anniversary of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army”, it was effectively a commissioned work, but nevertheless remains one of the most genuine and honest paintings of its period. Like the artist’s “Harvest Feast”, it reflects Plastov’s almost instantaneous evolution into a master of painting in oil. The story of the painting, along with its creator’s quest to capture its artistic quintessence, is particularly relevant for understanding the foundation and development of Plastov’s artistic vocabulary in the late 1930s.

We spent a long time searching for a background. We wandered around the yellow Summer Garden and other no less summery gardens, all with freshly cut green lawns and little white dogs lying on them. We walked around Moscow, around other cities, among men and women who looked preoccupied even in their leisure hours. We walked by the sea, by the bright sea, along the bright sand, and the people were in bright clothing, and all was tranquilly tense. From time to time, birds appeared, not entirely unthreatening. Their wings entangled, but they did not fall, though they were heavier than air. Angels, though lighter than air, did crash down, threatening the lives of those they should protect. Numberless eyes spied over our unintelligent lives, and our transparent silhouettes were lit by leaden clouds, hanging uneasily in the atmosphere, while figures in uncomfortable poses hovered above the land. Above the lands, for various were the places of our sojourns, desires, joys, suffering and play.

The relatively new art of doll making has developed in a short space of time into a scintillating new form, combining aesthetic elements adopted from a range of older artistic genres with decorative attributes drawn from a wide perspective of history. This young form has reached a concentration of perfection in the work of Alexandra Khudyakova, an artist who creates a cornucopia of visual riches, one which can be as elaborate in its detail as it remains tantalizing and allusive in meaning.