Exhibition "Collection of Valerian Vadimovich Velichko"

On December 24, in the main building of the museum (Lenina st., 5), within the framework of the long-term project "Ownership collections in the museum’s collection", the exhibition "Collection of Valerian Vadimovich Velichko" starts working. The exposition includes more than 150 paintings, graphics and decorative and applied art of the 15th – 20th centuries by Russian, Western European artists and masters of the East.

The exhibition introduces the collection of the largest Russian collector and bibliophile of the first half of the 20th century, Valerian Vadimovich Velichko (1874-1956). The works of art and books he collected have enriched many museums and libraries in our country. At the end of his life Valerian Vadimovich bequeathed his collection to his nephew, Nikolai Kirillovich Velichko (1902–1997), and asked to transfer it “exclusively” to museums. The nephew fulfilled his uncle’s will and for many years donated works and books to museums and libraries in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novgorod, Chisinau, New Jerusalem and Irkutsk. Thanks to his friendship with the director of the Irkutsk Art Museum of that time, Alexei Dementyevich Fatyanov (1915-2001), Irkutsk received the most significant and diverse collection:from 1965 to 1992 Nikolai Velichko donated to the museum about two thousand works of art and rare books.

Works from this remarkable collection have largely changed the established order of the museum’s exposition. Thanks to the gifts from Velichko, the collection of icon painting has become one of the most significant in Siberia. About sixty unique items of decorative and applied art of Russian artistic silver of the 17th – 18th centuries made up a completely new section of the museum’s collection. The pride was the works of famous Russian and European masters: Karl Bryullov, Alexander Ivanov, Vasily Vereshchagin, Leonid Pasternak, Alexander Benois, Natalia Goncharova, Nikolai Kuzmin, Tatyana Mavrina; the Dutchman Phillips Wauverman, the Frenchman Constant Troion, the rare impressionist pastels of Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro in Russian museums. Japanese engraving - from Hokusai to Kunisada, Chinese watercolors and small sculptures by Far Eastern masters is also of absolute value.

The exhibition "Collection of Valerian Vadimovich Velichko" will be open in the main building of the museum (Lenin St., 5) until March 21, 2021. Due to the difficult epidemiological situation, visiting the museum is still possible only by appointment (tel.: 34-01-46). The museum has a mask mode.