Exhibition "Vanguard:
on a cart in the XXI century"

The Museum of Russian Impressionism, together with the Yeltsin Center and the Encyclopedia of Russian Avant-garde, announce the holding in Moscow of the exhibition "Avant-garde: on a cart into the XXI century" - a reconstruction of a large-scale exhibition of avant-garde art, forgotten in the Vyatka province a hundred years ago. From February to May 2022, the museum will display more than 100 works by prominent representatives of the Russian avant-garde from the collections of the Vyatka Art Museum, the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan, Slobodskoy and Yaransky local history museums.

The project has already been successfully presented at the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg and the Vyatka Art Museum in Kirov. He refers to the events of the turbulent post-revolutionary period, when the Soviet government actively collaborated with avant-garde artists, saw them as a driving force for the promotion of communist ideas and acquired their works for the capital and regional museums. In October 1921, more than 300 works from Vyatka, Moscow, Petrograd and Kazan were brought to the third traveling art exhibition in the city of Sovetsk, Vyatka province (Kirov region). The review, unprecedented in the number and scope of work, was to continue in other cities of the province. A month later, the masterpieces on carts were sent to the neighboring city of Yaransk, where, due to funding problems and the beginning of the autumn thaw, they were left in the local museum and forgotten for almost 100 years.

The combined efforts of the Yeltsin Center and the team of the Encyclopedia of Russian Avant-garde made it possible to partially recreate the third and two first art exhibitions in Sovetsk and show rare works from the funds of regional museums. Visitors will learn about the artistic policy of the Soviet regime in the first post-revolutionary years and about the activities of enthusiastic curators who, in a difficult time for the country, organized exhibitions of avant-garde art.

The exposition will continue the series of projects of the Museum of Russian Impressionism about avant-garde artists and exhibitions of Russian art of the first third of the XX century. Spectators will be able to see the newly discovered masterpieces of Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Nikolai Feshin, Ivan Klyun, Alexandra Exter and other masters.

“The exhibition will showcase the works of Russian avant-garde artists, whose heritage is valued all over the world. Curators presented this project in the regions, but finds of this level deserve to be shown in the capital. We are willingly partners with this event, ”notes Yulia Petrova, Director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism.

The exposition of the Museum of Russian Impressionism will for the first time show the restored two-sided painting "Composition" by Alexei Morgunov, to save which 983,056 rubles were collected with the help of a crowdfunding campaign on Planeta.ru. A rare work of a colleague of Kazimir Malevich was discovered by the curators of the exhibition in the collection of the Sloboda Museum of Local Lore in an emergency condition. More than 800 people took part in the fundraising project in three months.

Exhibition curators:

• Andrey Sarabyanov (Moscow) art critic, curator, publisher, researcher of the Russian avant-garde, author-compiler of the "Encyclopedia of the Russian avant-garde" (co-authored with V. I. Rakitin).
• Natalia Murray (London) art critic, curator, lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
• Anna Shakina (Kirov) art critic, candidate of art history, director of the Vyatka Art Museum named after A.M. and V.M. Vasnetsov.
• Anastasia Vinokurova (Moscow) leading specialist of the exhibition department of the Museum of Russian Impressionism.

An expanded catalog based on the previously released edition will be published for the exhibition.