Exhibition "The Image of the East in Russian Art of the First Half of the 20th Century"

From June 25 to October 1 in the Bashkir State Art Museum. M.V. Nesterova will host the exhibition “The Image of the East in Russian Art of the First Half of the 20th Century”.

This large-scale exhibition project was carried out by the State Museum and Exhibition Center ROSIZO with the participation of the State Museum of Oriental Art, the State Tretyakov Gallery, and the Saratov State Art Museum. A.N. Radishchev and the Private Foundation for the Support and Development of Scientific and Cultural Programs. S. Marjani.

The choice of the Bashkir Art Museum. M.V. Nesterova as a place of exposure is not accidental. On July 8-10, 2015, two major international events will be held in Ufa - the SCO BRICS summits, in which representatives of a number of the largest countries of the East will take part.

The exposition presents more than 65 paintings and graphic works of two dozen artists from the 1910s to 1940s, which in different periods of history and in different ways were associated with Central Asia.

P.S. Utkin. Still life. 1911. Oil on canvas. 46.5x56.5. Saratov State Art Museum. A.N. Radishchev

M.S.Saryan. Fruits and vegetables. 1942. Oil on canvas. 95x160 cm. State Museum of the East

Artists of the Blue Rose association are just one of the chapters of the chronicle of “pilgrimage to the country of the East” of advanced Russian art. The exhibition is trying to restore the main stages of this almost half-century journey without claiming academic completeness, but in an effort to emphasize the individuality of each author, his fidelity to himself and at the same time voluntary or involuntary responsiveness to the demands of the times.

L.L. Bure. Yard of the Shir Dor Madrasah in Samarkand. 1913. Oil on canvas. 61x54.5 cm. State Museum of the East

Central Asia for Russian artists of the first half of the last century is a mythical land, an occasion for inspiration, and sometimes just a game of imagination. For example, Ilya Mashkov, a member of the Jack of Diamonds society, was never there at all, and his colleague Aristarkh Lentulov reached the Crimea only, which didn’t stop one from painting spicy oriental still lifes, and the other from mosques and old khan’s palaces. Well, if anyone reached Samarkandia (if you recall the name of the travel notes of Kuzma Petrov – Vodkin, another famous hero of the project), then there is bright sunlight that imbues objects and figures, crazy ikat colors and intricate suzanne ornaments, the space silhouette of Shakhi-

Zinda and the Qur’an calligraphy left no one indifferent. This is especially noticeable in the 1920s and 1930s, when a creative business trip to Tashkent or Bukhara from Moscow with socialist realism gaining strength there turned into actual emigration, but it made it possible to live and create.

S.P. Yudin. Samarkand. The beginning of the 1900s. Canvas, oil. 44.5x68 cm. Marjani Foundation

A.N. Samokhvalov. Shahi Zinda. 1921. Gouache on paper. 43x51.5 cm. Marjani Foundation

In the late 1920s, Alexander Volkov, author of the famous “Pomegranate Tea House”, “the most amazing artist in Uzbekistan”, as his friends called him, combining radical avant-garde and traditional forms, creates an experimental association “Masters of the New East”. At the beginning of the 30s, the “Volkov brigade” was replenished by the primitivist Nikolai Karakhan, reminiscent of Diego Rivera with the fresco power of his canvases, and the visionary Ural Tansykbaev (according to legend, he who had already become the head of the Union of Artists of Uzbekistan in old age, died of a heart attack, seeing his early canvases) In the 1930s, a native of Vitebsk, Reuben Mazel, created his “Bible cycle”, transferring scripture plots to the Turkmen land. Mimics the paintings on the "production theme", creating cosmogonic allegories, Pavel Schegolev. Thus a unique phenomenon was born, which art critics now call the “Turkestan avant-garde”.

A.N. Volkov. People at the mosque. 1918. Oil on cardboard. 15.5x52. Marjani Foundation

A.N. Volkov. Picking cotton. 1931. Oil on canvas. 127 x 141.5. State Tretyakov Gallery

N.G. Karakhan. Women’s shock brigade. The beginning of the 1930s. Canvas, oil. 90x105 cm. State Museum of the East

But Central Asia was an outlet not only for avant-garde artists, but also for traditionalists who fled from captivity of Soviet officialdom. This exhibition practically returns from oblivion the finest painter and graphic artist, representative of the “Moscow school” Lev Kramarenko and his wife Irina Zhdanko. Household sketches made by them during official trips of the 1930s and in the tragic evacuation life that cost Kramarenko in the early 40s do not claim to be innovative, but they are distinguished by the subtlest professionalism and testify to the vigilance of the eye. As well as the work of the Russian seasonist Robert Falk, also created in the evacuation. At the current exhibition, even the socialist realist Semyon Chuykov with his "Boy with Fish" (1924) seems like a German expressionist.

L.Yu. Kramarenko. Pheasants. 1935. Gouache on paper. 69x47.5 cm. State Museum of the East

R.R. Falk. Old Uzbek 1938. Paper, white, watercolor, gouache. 62x42.5 cm. State Museum of the East

S.A. Chuykov. Morning of Kyrgyzstan. 1930s Canvas, oil. 88 x 116.5 State Tretyakov Gallery

The East excited, inspired, transformed Russian art. His magic and energy tried to solve and fix the domestic artists. And after them - the current exhibition.

The exhibition is open from Tuesday to Thursday from 10:00 to 18:30, on Saturday - from 12:00 to 20:30