Galina Churak

EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS

Galina Churak
Crossed Destinies Anton Chekhov and Isaac Levitan

№3 2010 (28)

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.”

EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS

Galina Churak
IVAN SHISHKIN’S OTHER GENRE The story of a search - and its findings

№1 2010 (26)

The artistic legacy of outstanding Russian painters such as Vasily Surikov, Viktor Vasnetsov and Ilya Repin – and another master from the same tradition, Ivan Shishkin – seems to have been studied, explored and expounded so thoroughly that, to use Shishkin´s words, “everything has been learned, and there is no more learning to be done”. However, museum researchers sometimes enjoy unexpected encounters with works by these masters that have been long forgotten and/or believed lost, or have a style unusual for them and here is the story of our search and findings.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Galina Churak
“One should search for nature at its simplest…”

№4 2007 (17)

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin is remembered in the history of Russian art as an artist who glorified the grandeur and beauty of the nature of his homeland, and masterfully and lovingly translated into the language of painting the limitless vastness of fields with golden grain, the greatness of oak forests with their ceaseless murmur, the dense pathless thickets of woodland, every single grass-blade, the unassuming flowers of the field, and the wrinkled tree-bark on an old tree. His life in art is one of the most essential and important components of Russian landscape painting, of the history of its formation and bloom.

150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY

Galina Churak
Pavel Tretyakov and His Gallery

№2 2006 (11)

"He alone maintained the whole school of Russian painting. An unprecedented and grandiose deed!" In such words the Russian painter Ilya Repin expressed both his own attitude and that of his contemporaries towards the collecting activity of Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov. For more than 100 years the Gallery has proudly, and gratefully, born the name of its founder, who turned the institution into a prominent cultural monument to Russian art that has been appreciated by many generations.

MASTERPIECES OF RUSSIAN ART

Galina Churak
Vasily Surikov: I loved beauty everywhere...

№1 2006 (10)

On March 1 1881 the “Peredvizhniki” (Wanderers) group was to open its ninth exhibition at the Yusupov palace on the Moika Embankment in St. Petersburg. Tragically, the event coincided with another one, among the most sinister in Russian history – the bomb thrown by a member of the secret political group Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) killed Emperor Alexander II. However, as soon as the days of mourning ended, the long wait of art enthusiasts was more than rewarded with masterpieces from the new generation of talented Russian artists: alongside Ilya Repin’s portraits of the composer Modest Mussorgsky and the author Alexei Pisemsky, “Alyonushka” by Vasily Vasnetsov and landscapes by Alexei Savrasov and Ivan Shishkin, viewers would discover the talent of the young Vasily Surikov. His name meant little at the time, but his work “Morning of the Streltsy Execution” seemed to predict in some enigmatic way the recent tragedy. The painting created a sensation. “His appearing to the artistic world with the painting ‘Execution of the Streltsy’ was sensational; nobody had started like that,” remembered Alexandra Botkina, Pavel Tretyakov’s daughter. “He did not hesitate, did not try to size up whether the time was good or bad for the exhibition of such a painting, but went off like a bolt.” Immediately after the exhibition in St. Petersburg, Surikov’s painting, acquired by Pavel Tretyakov before the exhibition, was moved to its permanent home in Lavrushinsky Pereulok. The Tretyakov Gallery was already considered a major collection of Russian art.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Galina Churak
The World of Ilya Repin and His Contemporaries

№4 2005 (09)

“The World of Ilya Repin and His Contemporaries” opened in the Wuppertal Arts Museum on October 9. 46 canvases and 30 graphic works from the Tretyakov Gallery display Repin’s painting and drawing, alongside 30 works by artists from his circle. With some such figures the artist had studied at the Academy of Arts, while with others he shared common interests through the group of artists known as the Wanderers (the “Peredvizhniki”). It can be said of the painters concerned, both as individuals and collectively, that they constituted an artistic group that thought in similar terms.