Zurab Tsereteli, "Sunny Garden". Exhibition dedicated to the artist’s 90th anniversary

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents a large personal exhibition of Zurab Konstantinovich Tsereteli, one of the greatest masters of Russian art of the 20th-21st centuries, People’s Artist of the USSR and the Russian Federation, President of the Russian Academy of Arts, dedicated to the celebration of his 90th anniversary. The exhibition will unfold on two floors of the building on Petrovka, 25 - this is where the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA) was opened a quarter of a century ago, of which the artist was the founder and director. The project partner is the premium automobile brand from China HONGQI (Honchi). Together with the brand, a special project “The Silk Road” has been prepared, which will become part of the monographic exhibition of Zurab Tsereteli.

Throughout the exhibition route, a “chronological dotted line” will mark the main stages and bright episodes of Tsereteli’s unique, extremely fruitful creative biography, covering a long and eventful period from the mid-1950s. up until today. Among them are such important milestones as studying at the Faculty of Painting at the Tbilisi Academy of Arts (graduated in 1958) and studying by a recent graduate the heritage of his native land as an artist at the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography of the Georgian SSR; fateful meetings with Picasso and Chagall in Paris in the mid-1960s and work as the chief artist of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the USSR embassies in Japan, Brazil, Portugal, Syria and other countries; teaching activity in the USA in the late 1970s and the design of the Moscow Olympics; the creation of the most important, symbolically significant monumental ensembles and urban planning projects for modern Russia in the 1990-2010s and the installation of prestigious sculptural monuments around the world; finally, the successful leadership of the Russian Academy of Arts for more than twenty-five years.

In harmony with Tsereteli’s central idea of a synthesis of arts, the exhibition will present works in a wide range of materials and techniques – from painting and graphics to round and relief sculpture, from enamels and stained glass to tapestries and mosaics. At the same time, paintings and graphic compositions, including very recent ones, which serve as a daily creative exercise for Tsereteli and develop into long-term cycles, will allow us to trace the evolution of the author’s style, the inexhaustible variability of images and impressions. They will allow you to feel the pulsation of the artist’s plastic thinking.

Rare works from his student period will be shown, created largely under the influence of teachers who connected the young artist with the traditions of the pre-revolutionary classical school of St. Petersburg, and early paintings that are marked by an active search for his own “voice” in art, as well as works from the 1960s-1980s., when Tsereteli became one of the main representatives of Soviet monumental modernism, the author of spectacular decorative compositions that decorated the resorts of the Black Sea coast and public buildings in various cities of the USSR. And, of course, the exhibition will demonstrate the main easel series of the newest stage of the artist’s creative path, marked by scale, technical complexity and visionary spirit. During these years, Tsereteli fully embodied the image of a universal artist, freely transcending the boundaries of techniques, genres and stylistic directions. Confidently working with large concepts, he seems to control the pure element of art.

Special sections of the exhibition are considered stops along the viewer’s path. Mythological, Christian and historical subjects important for understanding Tsereteli’s creative philosophy will be revealed in three special halls, which focus on the artist’s cross-cutting characters (Prometheus, St. George and Peter I). Other special spaces will include graphic and sculpture rooms, an amphitheater workshop where the master’s newest, freshly painted paintings will be displayed in the “single-work exhibition” genre, as well as a photographic gallery of his selected public monuments from the late 1960s to the present day - both in Russia and abroad. The exhibition will be complemented by archival photographs and rare documentaries. All works shown at the exhibition come from the author’s collection in Moscow and Tbilisi. The viewer will also see the stained glass window installed by the artist in the museum for its opening in 1999.

The key to reading the exhibition will be the image of a sunny garden. This poetic and visual archetype is central to Tsereteli. Solar and cosmogonic symbols, motifs of flowering, abundance of flora and fauna, signs of celestial bodies migrate from painting to painting, finding embodiment, for example, in countless floral still lifes with favorite sunflowers. They also appear in a whole variety of media, not only in easel works, but in large public ensembles. At a metaphorical level, Tsereteli understands the figure of the artist as a kind of gardener, capable of cultivating and transforming social reality in all its complexity. “Solar Garden” by Zurab Tsereteli is intended to open to the viewer the powerful mythopoetic space of his works - a space of beauty and vitality, where the natural and human, archaic and modern, contemplative and active reside in a harmonious, creative unity.

The large-scale monographic exhibition is accompanied by a special project MMOMA x HONGQI “The Silk Road” in the halls of the first floor of the museum on Petrovka. The name of the exhibition refers to the route that historically connected East Asia with the Mediterranean, and is a kind of allusion to the main values of the HONGQI automobile brand, aimed at building connections between traditional Eastern culture and today’s world and technological progress. The center of the project was the sculpture of the same name by Zurab Tsereteli, who combines a classical understanding of art with an individual vision, transforms his style over the decades and constantly expands the geography of his artistic activity. This work was created by the artist in 2017 and was first presented in 2023 at a solo exhibition at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing (NAMOC), and after its completion remained in the museum’s collection. Along with a model of Zurab Tsereteli’s sculpture, MMOMA will show new works by young contemporary artists Anastasia Artyomova and Misha Most, created specifically for the project and inspired by the history and philosophy of the HONGQI brand. They offer their own perspective on the connection between the past, present and future, on progress, as well as on traditions and timeless values.

HONGQI (translated from Chinese as “Red Banner”) is a premium automobile brand from China with a long history and rich heritage. It was founded in 1958 and for more than half a century has specialized in the production of executive cars exclusively for the needs of government agencies, senior management and political leaders of the country. In 2018, a decision was made to transform the brand, as a result of which a model range of HONGQI cars was created, available for free sale, aimed at the most successful and wealthy members of society. The current HONGQI model line in Russia includes 6 models: the flagship executive sedan H9, the premium full-size electric crossover E-HS9, the business class minivan HQ9, the premium full-size crossover HS7, the business sedan H5 and the mid-size crossover HS5.

The brand’s design is based on a symbiosis of traditional luxury and modern technological advances, and is intended to personify the exclusivity of taste, sophistication and leadership on the path to excellence. The design of the signature radiator grille with 12 vertical slats is drawn to the ancient traditions of the Chinese chronology, symbolizing the cyclic signs of the duodecimal cycle - the Earthly branches. HONGQI is part of the leading concern in the Chinese automotive industry - FAW Group. On the Russian market, the official distributor of HONGQI cars is FAV Eastern Europe LLC.