Exhibition. Moscow 1957 in photographs of Leonar Janadda. The look of a young Swiss

On the occasion of the anniversary of the International Festival of Youth and Students in 1957 in Moscow, the museum presents the exhibition "Moscow 1957 in the photographs of Leonar Janadda", which will be held in the Balcony of the Museum from August 16 to October 2. The exposition will feature over 100 photographs of the famous Swiss photographer. These are photographs about people, their feelings and mood: the touching thoughtfulness of the girl on the steps of the escalator, the love of a young couple at the teeth of the Kremlin wall, the sincere enthusiasm of the crowd on the Crimean bridge - all of them are a wonderful example of multi-faceted reporting. These images contrast with photographs of anti-Soviet propaganda; this is a retrospective of the life of Soviet people through the eyes of a foreigner.

At the walls of the Kremlin. @ Leonar Janadda

Twenty-two-year-old Janadda came to the Soviet Union at the VI World Festival of Youth and Students as part of the official delegation of Switzerland as a correspondent for the Swiss publication L’Illustré. His lyrical photographs, which showed the daily life of Muscovites, were not liked in the West, the newspaper was accused of loyalty to the communist regime, and the editorial publicly renounced Janadda. This was a turning point in the work of the gifted photographer: Leonard realized that a piece of bread for a journalist is unreliable and depends on the political situation. And then he decided to become an engineer and never return to professional photography.

The art of the Swiss photographer is well known to the Russian audience. Over the years, exhibitions of his works took place in Moscow (at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts), in Tula, in Yakutsk, in Khabarovsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk and many other cities of Russia.

The exhibition at the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art is special. Photos will be in the atmosphere of the era in which they were created: the exhibition takes place in one of the main halls of the building of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, built in the early 1950s under the guidance of the master of Soviet architecture V.G. Gelfreich. It was in these walls that the most important state decisions were made, the fate of millions of Soviet people was decided. As a sign of respect to the outstanding photographer, the museum presents its gift: the photo exhibition will be complemented by priceless works of decorative art of the late 1950s from the museum’s funds, which will allow viewers to plunge into the atmosphere of that time, feel closer to ordinary Soviet people looking at us from photographs Leonara Janadda.

The festival movement continues in the 21st century. This fall, the next - the 19th World Festival of Youth and Students will be held in Russia again: from October 14 to October 22 young people from all over the world will gather in Sochi. On the eve of this holiday, recalling the events of sixty years ago seems to us especially important and interesting.

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Despite the difficult fate of the photos from the festival and the decision to devote himself to engineering, Leonar carried his love of art through his whole life. Today, 60 years later, he heads one of Switzerland’s largest art funds, the Pierre Janadda Foundation in Martigny, on the borders of France and Italy. Among the projects of the Foundation are the exhibitions of Vasily Kandinsky, Marc Chagall, Russian icon painting. In 2006, President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin signed a decree awarding the Order of Friendship to Mr. Janadde for his great contribution to strengthening Russian-Swiss cultural cooperation.