A permanent exhibition opens at the Bronstein Gallery

Starting April 24, the Viktor Bronstein Gallery will open its first permanent exhibition featuring works by Irkutsk artists. This unique project will feature approximately 80 works of art from the collection of the gallery’s founder and patron, Viktor Bronstein.

Paintings, sculptures, and graphic works are the result and witnesses of the turbulent, contradictory, and expressive artistic life of Irkutsk over the last century.

"We didn’t aim to show a precise chronology of events," explains exhibition curator Alina Sverdlova-Aleksandrova. "It was important to us to reflect significant discoveries and remarkable destinies, to trace the lines of influence and continuity that shaped the tradition as we know it today."

The new exhibition features vibrant, life-loving Siberian and Mongolian landscapes, cityscapes that offer a glimpse of Irkutsk through the eyes of artists over the years and trace its changing appearance; portraits and self-portraits by Irkutsk artists, as well as works that reveal the artists’ personal worlds.

Visitors will see works by 29 artists. Among the most interesting pieces are an early female portrait by renowned artist Alexei Zhibinov, recently returned to Irkutsk; rare sketches by Arkady Vychugzhanin; the historical painting "Requiem" by artist Vasily Bochantsev; graphic works by Boris Lebedinsky and Alexander Shipitsyn; expressive paintings by Boris Desyatkin and Nikolai Vershinin; works by recognized classics Galina Novikova, Andrei Rubtsov, Anatoly Kostovsky, Vladimir Lapin, Vladimir Tetenkin, Evgeny Ushakov, and Pyotr Turchaninov; and paintings by contemporaries Dmitry Lysyakov, Sergei Zhilin, Sergei Eloyan, and others.