Exhibition projection "Foreboding of Victory" dedicated to the 75th anniversary of Victory

The Russian Academy of Arts, together with the international news agency Russia Today, presents the exhibition projection "Foreboding of Victory", dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War.

The exposition, deployed in the Museum and Exhibition Complex of the Russian Academy of Arts, Zurab Tsereteli Gallery of Art, presents unique photo-frames from the archives of the Russia Today, MIA “Russian Academy of Arts and private collections.” Another exhibition hall is allocated for the works of front-line artists from the funds of the MVK RAX.

Viewers will see photo portraits of academics - artists, architects, art historians, people of art who have gone through the crucible of war, the front, battle wounds, the loss of friends and combat associates, but who have dedicated their future lives to creating the beautiful, serving art. These are such famous masters as M. M. Kurilko-Ryumin, A. P. Levitin, M. P. Miturich-Khlebnikov, A. A. Mylnikov, Vl. E. Tsigal and Vic. E. Tsigal, B. M. Nemensky, brothers A. P. and S. P. Tkachev, B. S. Ugarov, L. E. Kerbel, G. D. Yastrebenetsky and many others.

Often the artist decided on his future fate at a difficult moment: on a shining sunny May day of 1942 a company of soldiers of the 301 rifle division came under heavy mortar fire. When this seemingly endless roar stopped, standing on the mangled ground, among the murdered comrades, the suddenly gray-haired ordinary Ephraim Zverkov makes a vow: “If fate saves my life, I will write a beautiful flourishing Earth, a world filled with great silence.” In the winter of that year, Sergei Tkachev was seriously injured in the shoulder. In the heat of battle, under the aimed fire of the enemy, the young soldier had only one thought: “The hand is right, how am I going to be an artist now?”

The exposition of the exhibition includes not only a photo gallery of portraits of masters of art in the prime of their creative career, but also amazing images of warriors-artists of the front-line era.

Unfortunately, not all participants in the war were able to realize their dreams of the future… But in the photo chronicle from the archives of the MIA "Russia Today" we see that the preservation of the cultural heritage, interest in creativity, the enormous creative power of art united the rear and the front, helped to survive, gave a foreboding of victory. The military photographer’s lens captured unique shots — the evacuation of the Hermitage’s treasures and the empty halls of the museum (1941), the installation of the film “Valery Chkalov” by Friedrich Ermler and Alexander Gunzburg (1941), the shooting of the film “Ivan the Terrible” by Sergey Eisenstein (1945), and the performance of front-line theaters, Dmitry Shostakovich with students of the P. I. Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory at a composition lesson (1943)…

A special section of the exhibition will present unique video materials and fragments of the film “Foreboding of Victory”, with the recollections of front-line academicians: Boris Nemensky, Sergey and Alexei Tkachevs, Grigory Yastrebenetsky and Grigory Ushaev.