Spring and Summer Exhibitions of Classical Russian Painters

This spring and early summer offers us the opportunity to visit an extensive Vasily Vereshchagin exhibition, as well as portraits made by some of the greatest Russian painters of their wives.

Vasily Vereshchagin

March 7 – July 15

New Tretyakov, Krymsky Val, 10, halls 60–62

Tickets: 500 RUB

Vasily Vereshchagin (1842–1904) was an outstanding Russian painter, historian, ethnographer, writer, philosopher, traveler, and military officer. The New Tretyakov Gallery offers a comprehensive retrospective of the his best graphic works and paintings.

According to the gallery website, ‘The purpose of the exhibition is to reveal the artist’s unique personality to the public, to present him as a painter, military man and pacifist, a passionate researcher of new geographic landscapes, countries and people, a visionary who managed to transform battle painting as a genre in a radical way’. The display will largely consist of pieces from the Tretyakov Gallery collection — about 100 paintings and 130 graphic works. There also will be contributions from the State Russian Museum and from museum collections based in Novgorod, Vologda, Yaroslavl, Kazan, Ivanovo, Serpukhov, Cherepovets and Perm.

Wives

February 1 – May 15

Museum of Russian Impressionism, 15 Leningradsky prospekt, building 11

Tickets: 250 RUB

This exhibition includes over 40 portraits of great Russian painters’ significant others. The artists include Ilya Repin, Mikhail Vrubel, Valentin Serov, Boris Kustodiev, Igor Grabar, Petr Konchalovsky, Boris Grigoriev, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Alexander Deineka, Robert Falk, Konstantin Yuon, Yury Pimenov and others.

The exhibition is aimed at reviewing the development of Russian art from the end of the 19^th to mid-20^th century, from the perspective of painters’ wives’ portraits. The artistic changes in female portraits at the eve of the 20^th century are largely related to social and political shocks of that uneasy time. Fine ladies in corsets, furs and silks are replaced with revolutionary women, building the new world together with men.

The exhibition organizers have complemented the paintings with fragrances of sea, storm, a garden after the rain, and field flowers.