#3 2010 (28)

On Levitan's Landscapes and the Levitan Exhibition

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Lydia Iovleva

"Levitan's landscape" is a term firmly ingrained both in art scholarship and in the minds of many art lovers. A "Levitan landscape" is different from an "Ivan Shishkin landscape" or even landscapes by Alexei Savrasov or Vasily Polenov, although it is very close to the last ones. Usually, a "Levitan landscape" is a simple image of an almost always deserted natural environment - a creek, a narrow pathway, groves rolling on into the depth of the picture in a somewhat diagonal direction, or copses. It is set in different seasons, except (largely) winter -Levitan's pieces almost never feature images of snowy winter -and usually depicts a transitional season or summer; there are blue horizons and a high limitless sky with a distinct life of its own, beyond the mental grasp of human beings.

Isaac Levitan. On the 150th Anniversary of His Birth

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

The State Tretyakov Gallery thanks the following participants of the project...

Crossed Destinies - Anton Chekhov and Isaac Levitan

EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS

Galina Churak

When Yulia Sergeievna, the heroine of Anton Chekhov's 1895 story "Three Years", and her husband visited an art show in Easter week, making a tour of the rooms, she "stopped before a small landscape... In the foreground was a stream, over it a little wooden bridge; on the further side a path that disappeared in the dark grass; a copse on the right; near it a camp fire - no doubt of watchers by night; and in the distance there was a glow of the evening sunset. Yulia imagined walking herself along the little bridge, and then along the little path further and further, while all round was stillness, the drowsy landrails calling and the fire flickering in the distance. And for some reason she suddenly began to feel that she had seen those very clouds that stretched across the red part of the sky, and that copse, and that field before, many times before. She felt lonely, and longed to walk on and on along the path; and there, in the glow of sunset was the calm reflection of something unearthly, eternal."

Isaac Levitan and His Contemporaries

HERITAGE

Olga Atroshchenko

The life story of Isaac Levitan as an artist is in many respects similar to the life stories of other graduates of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Most of them offspring of peasants or bankrupt merchants, and very few from noble families, they usually came to Moscow from the remote provinces practically penniless, and often, after the loss of parents, like Levitan.

Isaac Levitan: Beyond Landscape

EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS

Nina Markova

"The import and significance of every true, great artist consists in the irresistible appeal of his personality and in how it reflects in his artwork", wrote Leonid Pasternak in a memoir about Isaac Levitan. The originality of Levitan as an artist lies in his being a natural, entirely self-sufficient landscape artist who fully realized his talent in landscape art. His landscapes eclipsed all his forays into different genres and creative activities. Who remembers now that Levitan illustrated magazines and books, designed stage sets, created portraits and still-lifes?

Isaac Levitan: A Master of Pastel Art

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Lydia Torstensen

Levitan started using pastel sticks very early on. His youthful pieces such as the images of the little girls Nadya Yakovleva (1880, Russian Museum) and Lena Nenarokova (1880, Tretyakov Gallery) already have delicate pastel inclusions. However, it was not before the 1890s that Levitan's pastel explorations truly reached their creative peak. Among the pastels currently known and dated by the artist himself, "Storm" (1890, private collection, Moscow) is the earliest. From 1890 on Levitan created a number of remarkable pieces which established him as one of the premier masters of pastel art of the late 19th century.

Isaac Levitan's Life and Work Timeline

HERITAGE

Margarita Chizhmak

August 18 (by the Old Style, 30): Born into the family of a railroad employee Ilya Abramovich Levitan in Kibarty (today Kibartai village in Lithuania).

The Levitan Memorial Museum in Plyos - Historical Highlights

MUSEUMS OF RUSSIA

Olga Nasedkina

In June 2010 the town of Plyos marked its 600th anniversary. 50 years ago, in 1960, the day for the festivities was set on August 30, which coincided with the centenary of the birth of Isaac Levitan, the illustrious landscape artist. Many artists from Moscow and the city of Ivanovo responded to the artist Boris Prorokov's call to donate their paintings to Plyos. The new picture gallery, an establishment operated on pro bono basis, was opened in 1961; initially it was accommodated at a Plyos agricultural college, on Sobornaya Hill, in a building which before the revolution was occupied by a governmental agency. Later, in 1962, the gallery moved to the Voskresensky church near Torgovaya Square, not far from a boat quay.

"The Levitan House of Landscape". Near Vladimir

MUSEUMS OF RUSSIA

A landmark event happened on August 23 2008 in the village of Eliseikovo, in the Petushinsky District near Vladimir - the Levitan House of Landscape opened.

Anticipations of Photography. Notes on painting and photography in Russia in the second half of the 19th century

EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS

Natalya Gorlenko

When in 1839 the world learned about the invention of photography, most artists did not think long before they recognized it as a purely scientific discovery. Few, if any, thought that photography would have an impact on the art of painting. Although the first photographs were the result of the collaboration between a scientist and an artist, and later many professional painters became photographers, and photography significantly influenced the art of painting, for a long time the artistic community was “opposed” to photography. However, if we look back at the state of painting prior to 1839, we can see a whole range of developments that seem to have broken the ground for the emergence of the new art.

Marianne Werefkin: The Woman and the Artist

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Natalya Tolstaya

The exhibition "Russian Artists Abroad. Marianne Werefkin (1860-1938)"'opening at the Tretyakov Gallery, is a part of the Ticino Year in Russia - the year dedicated to the Swiss canton of Ticino in Russia - and is timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the artist's birth. Regrettably, the general public in Russia knows little about Marianne Werefkin, although she is a fascinating personality in many respects. Some viewers will be more interested in her evolution as an artist - from her "Peredvizhniki"-style realism, through symbolism and other schools that nearly all artists of her age engaged with, towards a very distinctive, idiosyncratic expressionism. Others will probably take an interest in her life story, so unusual for a 19th-century woman, including many dramatic turns of fate, and resolute decisions taken in the course of it.

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INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA

Ute Bauermeister

The summer exhibition “Miró. The Colours of Poetry” at the Museum Frieder Burda (2 July to 14 November 2010) is dedicated to the artist Joan Miró, and shows around 100 works by the Catalan artist who so strongly influenced 20th century art. The pictures cover six decades of Miró’s work, and are drawn from various private collections and museums from all over the world. A large number of works owned by the Miró family itself are shown as well, a rarity in itself, while others come from the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca. The exhibition was curated by the worldwide expert on sculpture Jean-Louis Prat, a close friend of Miró who organized exhibitions for him during his lifetime, while the artist’s grandchild Joan Punyet Miró attended its opening.

Pierre Cardin Presents

I am greatly pleased to pioneer in the Tretyakov Gallery Magazine the section “Pierre Cardin Presents”, introducing my projects in which theatre, ballet, opera, dance, visual and applied arts, and fashion perfor-med spotlessly and solo are combined to achieve a synthesis that is the thing of the future.

Pierre Cardin

 

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