"Snow on the Grass". Exhibition by Yuri Norstein and Francesca Yarbusova

The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center presents an exhibition by director-animator Yuri Norstein and artist Francesca Yarbusova "Snow on the Grass". The project is timed to coincide with Norstein’s 80th birthday.

From the very beginning of his artistic life, Norstein approached animation as myth-making, inventing animated universes at the intersection of painting and literature. The inhabitants of these universes - the heroes of "Hedgehog in the Fog", "Tales of Fairy Tales", "Crane and Heron" - are collected by their creators from reality and fiction, past and future, childhood memories and thoughts of an adult.

The exhibition in the Jewish Museum will take as a basis the method of Norshtein and Yarbusova’s work on multi-layered characters and will simultaneously become a guide and a labyrinth through the biography and work of the two artists. The main exhibits of the exhibition will be materials from Norstein’s studio and large-scale mise-en-scène installations created specifically for this project.

The first part of the exhibition will show several voluminous spatial compositions that will combine fragments of the director’s famous films with documentary evidence of his past. One of these compositions is dedicated to the artist’s native yard - he grew up in Moscow’s Maryina Roshcha and transferred the smallest details of the military and post-war life into many of his works, including the Tale of Fairy Tales. Real points on the biographical map of Norstein will be inhabited by fictions - the heroes of his works.

The second part of the exhibition is built around a workflow, most of which has always remained a mysterious backstage for fans of Norshtein and Yarbusova. Visitors will be able to explore materials for the main films of the artists - from sketches and storyboards to the phases of a character’s birth - as well as see how the long-term work on the film "The Overcoat" is going on.

For the exhibition, a program has been developed for people with different forms of disabilities. For visually impaired and blind visitors, a special excursion route will be presented. Together with the association of deaf guides "Gesture in the Museum", the Jewish Museum organizes excursions to the RSL. For visitors with intellectual disabilities, master classes based on the exhibition will be held.

Authors

Yuri Norshtein is an outstanding Soviet and Russian director and animator, Honorary Professor of VGIK, People’s Artist of the USSR. As an animator of the Soyuzmultfilm studio, he participated in the creation of such cartoons as Bonifatsia’s Vacation, Cheburashka, Mitten, Lefty, Caution, Pike! In 1975, a film was released that brought the director worldwide fame - "Hedgehog in the Fog".

Francesca Yarbusova is a Soviet and Russian animation director and winner of the Presidential Prize. The wife of Yuri Norshtein and the artist of all his films: "The Fox and the Hare", "The Hedgehog in the Fog", "The Crane and the Heron", "The Tale of Fairy Tales", "The Overcoat" fed the generals ”,“ Sich at Kerzhenets ”and others. She illustrated the books "Confusion", "Dedushkin’s Valenok", "Stories" by Mikhail Zhvanetsky and others.

Films by Norshtein and Yarbusova are known all over the world and have been awarded Russian and international prizes, including the USSR State Prize, as well as the Grand Prix of film festivals in the USA, France, Croatia and other countries. In animation, Yuri Norshtein and Francesca Yarbusova became the authors of a new language that combined the history of world art and the acuteness of childhood memories, classical literature and the beauty of everyday life. After the appearance of the film "Tale of Fairy Tales", it became clear that animation is capable of speaking on any topic and does not obey the hierarchy in which it was customary to place it behind the cinema.

The curator of the exhibition is Maria Gadas.

The exposition artist is Maria Utrobina.