The Russian Museum presented visitors the exhibition "Vasily Kandinsky and Russia"

ST. PETERSBURG. “Vasily Kandinsky and Russia” - under this name, the Russian Museum presented its guests an exhibition that opened in the Benois building on September 22. To organize the exhibition, works from their collections were provided not only by the country’s main museums (the Hermitage, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin Museum), but also by private collectors.

In addition to paintings and drawings belonging to Vasily Kandinsky, and samples of his porcelain, the exhibition includes works by contemporaries of the famous artist. Many of them are no less famous than the hero of the day (the exhibition was dedicated to the 150th anniversary of Kandinsky, which will be celebrated in December) - Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich, Ivan Bilibin and other authors of his circle.

The organizers of the exhibition note that the artists whose works were included in the exposition, together with Kandinsky participated in exhibitions organized by the Blue Horseman society and the Izdebsky Salon. For them, the beginning of the twentieth century was a time of development in their work of the principles of modernism, symbolism and expressionism.

The exposition is supplemented with artifacts - it included objects of peasant life, icons, lithographs. According to the researchers of the artist, these objects became the reason for the appearance of Byzantine motifs in his works. From the biography of Kandinsky it is known that initially he did not plan to devote himself to the career of an artist.

His first place of study was Moscow University, where he entered in 1885, intending to study law. However, after participating in an ethnographic expedition in the Vologda Territory, he developed an interest in Russian motives. Kandinsky made the final decision to devote his life to painting after he saw in Moscow, in 1895, Claude Manet’s painting “Haystack”.

You can visit the exhibition until November 21.

Ludmila Trautmane © Gallerix.ru