Not painting. Decorative and applied art from the collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts A.S. Pushkin

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts AS Pushkin presents the exhibition “Not Painting. Decorative and applied art from the collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts A. S. Pushkin ". For the first time, the main theme of the exhibition will not be painting, but ceramics and textiles created by the famous masters of the twentieth century Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Raoul Dufy, Maurice Denis, Fernand Léger. The exhibition shows more than 70 works, including decorative ceramics by Maurice Denis and the Fauves from the collection of I. A. Morozov, small-circulation works created by Pablo Picasso in the Madura ceramics workshop in Vallauris, tapestries by Jean Lurs and Fernand Léger, as well as extremely rare textile panels by Raoul Dufy, one of the leading textile artists of the Art Deco era.

For the artists, ceramics turned out to be an organic continuation of their work: the choice of pictorial motifs, the rhythmic construction of compositions, the peculiarities of the palette and characteristic brushstroke make it possible to unmistakably see the author’s individuality in each of these objects. So, Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger have always been supporters of the broadest introduction of art into everyday life. This was especially true of the motives of the graphic sheets of Picasso, who wanted to see his ceramics in homes and markets, or, as he said in one of his interviews, "to see a woman going to the fountain with one of my jugs for water."

Along with the small-circulation works of Picasso and Leger, the exhibition presents truly unique specimens acquired at the beginning of the 20th century by the famous collector Ivan Morozov. Faience vases with picturesque compositions by Maurice Denis, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Jean Puy are the most unusual pieces in his collection. They belong to the so-called "Asnières school" (French - l’école d’Asnières), which brings together French artists of different directions, who from 1906 to 1911 worked in the workshop of the ceramist André Mete (1871-1920) in Asnières-sur-Seine… In 1906, one of the most famous Parisian art dealers, Ambroise Vollard, turned to him with an unusual proposal - to establish the production of unique faience, which would be painted by painters of new directions. The purpose of this experiment,in addition to the expected commercial success, there was also the adaptation of the new artistic language to the tastes of the general public. Fauvist ceramics was, as a result, the most successful part of Vollard’s experiment. The limited and bright palette of enamels, the openness of these artists to traditional forms of art and the rare opportunity for them to try themselves as ornamentalists made this type of creativity especially attractive.

Henri Matisse also started working in ceramics in the workshop of André Mete. However, then he left this genre for a long time and returned to clay only at the end of his career. The museum collection contains three works by A. Matisse, belonging to the second, last ceramic period. The artist lived at that time on the Cote d’Azur, where in the late 1940s a powerful surge of interest in this ancient craft began. All new ceramic workshops were opened here, many modern painters who came to the south tried themselves in this material. Ceramics interested Matisse primarily as a material for monumental painting. The central work of those years was the small chapel of the Rosary of the Dominican Monastery in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, designed by him, which he called "the ultimate goal of all the labors of his life."

To illustrate the creative method of artists, works of decorative and applied art are supplemented with graphic works from the collection of the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkin and a private collection.

Exhibition curators: Elena Pilnik, Senior Researcher of the Old Masters Art Department; Elena Korotkikh, Researcher of the Department of Art of the Countries of Europe and America of the XIX-XX centuries