After Impressionism

18 Apr - 20 Aug 2023
Gallery of European and American Art and America

After Impressionism

The exhibition demonstrates the process of interaction between Russian art and artistic movements in Western Europe during the formation of the avant-garde and modernism.

The project will show how the Russian artists, getting acquainted with the contemporary art of France, moved from imitating its individual aspects and technical methods to free creative thinking, which allowed them to invent such artistic movements as neo-primitivism, abstract art and others within the avant-garde movement. The exhibition will restore some forgotten "subjects" of art history that have been displaced from our memory by later developments, such as the tradition going back to Pierre Puvi de Chavannes of creating large-scale monumental and decorative works designed to bring harmony to everyday life. This tradition includes the paintings of the German Hans von Marais, our compatriots Konstantin Korovin, Victor Borisov-Musatov, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, and Mikhail Nesterov. Special attention will be paid to the role of pointillism in the art of the beginning of the XX century: it was through its pictorial language that the young Russian artists Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich and Robert Falk discovered impressionism.

The exhibition will conclude with the "Russian answers" to the challenges of the Impressionist artistic revolution - works by Kazimir Malevich, Vasily Kandinsky, Pavel Filonov and Vladimir Tatlin, which marked a radical departure from tradition.