Exhibition

Ausstellungsflügel

Open Monday - Sunday 10 am – 8 pm
Guided tours: Phone :++49 (0)211-89 90123

Monet Matisse Cézanne Gauguin Repin Kandinsky Malevich et al.


BONJOUR RUSSIA
French and Russian Masterpieces
1870-1925 from Moscow and St. Petersburg

DUESSELDORF:
September 15, 2007 - January 6, 2008
Mondays – Sundays, 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Ticket and tours can be booked online starting now

LONDON, Royal Academy of Arts:
January to April 2008

Press conference: Thursday, September 12, 2007, 12:00 a.m.

The museum kunst palast, Duesseldorf, with the support of E.ON AG, presents a unique show featuring top works of French and Russian modern art. For the "Bonjour Russia" exhibition, curated by the British exhibition organizer Sir Norman Rosenthal, more than 120 masterpieces from the inventories of the four largest Russian museums – the State Hermitage and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, as well as the State Pushkin Museum and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow – will all be traveling together for the first time to Germany.

The exhibition, whose only venue in Germany will be Duesseldorf, is going to devote itself to taking a concentrated look at the years from 1870 to 1925, not only uncovering parallels and reciprocal influences, but also the different ways taken by developments in modern Russian and French art. The spectrum of the works on display will range from the Russian realism of Ilya Repin to Cézannism, Fauvism, Neoprimitivism, Cubo-Futurism and abstraction up to Suprematism.

Key works by the most important pioneers of modern French and Russian painting will be on exhibit, such as the portrait of Jeanne Samary by Renoir, "Mont Saint-Victoire" by Cézanne, the portrait of Dr. Rey by Van Gogh, "Her Name is Vairaumati" by Gauguin, "17 October 1905" by Ilya Repin, "The Dance" and "The Red Room" by Matisse, "Guitar and Violin" or "Bathers" by Picasso, "The Red Jew" by Chagall, "Composition No. 7" by Kandinsky, the nude by Tatlin, and the triptych of "Black Cross", "Black Circle" and "Black Square" by Malevich.

"The focus is going to be on reflecting the changes undertaken by Russian representatives of modern art under the influence of their Parisian masters. Here it should not be forgotten how fast the pupils overtook their masters, opening up new horizons in art not only for Russia, but also for the whole of Europe, and exploring realms hitherto unimaginable in art." (Sir Norman Rosenthal)

Thanks to the largesse of the Russian museums providing the loans, works can now be brought together – first in Duesseldorf and then in London – which eloquently express the magnificent history of modern art as well as the history of Russian art collections.

The Lenders
The Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg, founded by Czar Nicholas II in memory of his Father Alexander III in 1895, holds in its comprehensive collections the history of Russian art from medieval icons to the avant-garde.

The inventory of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow includes an extensive collection of Russian art focusing on painting of nineteenth-century realists surrounding the group of artists known as the "Wanderers" or "Itinerants", as well as portraits of personalities from the world of Russian culture and art, gathered together by the well-to-do dealer and textile manufacturer Pavel Tretyakov. His collection was bequeathed to the city of Moscow together with that of his brother Sergei Tretyakov in 1892.
The inventories of both the Russian State Museum as well as the Tretyakov Gallery have been supplemented by works appropriated from private collections after the Russian Revolution in 1917.

The first-class works of impressionist painters such as Monet and Renoir, among others, as well as outstanding paintings by Gauguin, Cézanne, van Gogh, Matisse und Picasso from the collections of Sergei Shchukin und Ivan Morosov were an inestimable enrichment to the collections in the area of modern art at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

Katharine the Great laid the foundation stone for the incomparable splendor of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg by purchasing hundreds of artworks from Europe in the mid-eighteenth century.

The founding of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow in 1912 grew out of an idea of Ivan Tsvetaev, professor of art theory and art history at Moscow University.

The exhibition in Duesseldorf is divided up into four chapters.


Russian Realism and the Influence of French Naturalism
The first section of the exhibition will illustrate the development of Russian art, focusing on Realist painting and on the need for a national identity which arose end of the nineteenth century – "Russian-ness" in art and culture.

This chapter of the exhibition will relate Russian art to major French works which were either acquired in Paris or in St. Petersburg on various occasions, or were shown in Moscow. Paintings by Corolus-Durand, Rousseau, Corot, Tissot and Daubigny will be on display. By the same token, works by Russian artists will be examined who took trips outside Russia, in particular with the destination of France or Paris.

The first section of the exhibition will focus on the key figure of Ilya Repin, one of the most important members of the so-called "Wanderers" or "Itinerants", a group of Russian Realists.
Additional artists worthy of mention are Ivan Kramskoi, Valentin Serov, Isaac Levitan, Mikhail Nesterov and Mikhail Vrubel.

The Morosov and Shchukin Collections
The second section of the exhibition will present not only masterworks from the two great Moscow collections – those of Ivan Morosov and Sergei Shchukin – but also their differing points of emphasis. There is no doubt that the collections of these two Moscow textile merchants exerted a significant influence on the development of the Russian avant-garde. These collections displayed many facets of Monet, Renoir and, especially in their post-impressionist phase, Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso.

"The Dance" by Matisse – commissioned by Morosov to decorate the large stairway in his Moscow villa – will be the centerpiece of this second part of the exhibition.

Sergei Diaghilev and the "World of Art"

The third part of the exhibition will be devoted to the famous theater impresario and exhibition organizer Sergei Diaghilev. He played an important role not only in the "World of Art" movement, but also in promoting the presentation of modern French art in Russia and the idea of Russian art and culture in Western Europe, particularly in Paris.

This section will present artists such as Alexander Benois and Léon Bakst, Boris Kustodiev, Nicholas Roerich, Alexander Golovin und Valentin Serov, as well as impressive portraits of such great Russian creative personalities as Vsevolod Meyerhold, Feodor Chaliapin and Anna Akhmatova.
This chapter of the exhibition will also link the world of the "Wanderers" to the upcoming, unique Russian avant-garde, taking a look at Kandinsky, Chagall and the bold Russian innovations of Mikhail Larionov und Natalia Goncharova.

Modern Russian Art: From Primitivism to Abstraction
The last part of the exhibition will put the impressive kaleidoscope of artistic innovation in the first quarter of the twentieth century on display. Daring new interpretations of Cubism, as well as Italian Futurism, led to outstanding Cubo-Futurist works not only by Larionov and Goncharova, but also by Ivan Puni, Pavel Filonov and a remarkable group of experimental women artists, including Olga Rozanova, Lyubov Popova and Aleksandra Exter.
Vladimir Tatlin's unique three-dimensional constructions heralded the appearance of Constructivism, and Kazimir Malevich, with his "Black Square", considered to be an "icon of modern art", paved the way for the purely abstract style of Suprematism.


“Modern French art undoubtedly offered a constant touchstone for the development of Russian art at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The many different ways in which so many Russian artists of both sexes successfully combined these Western influences with the richness of their own cultural heritage not only created a superb blossoming of Russian art, but also left their mark on the development of modern art history.”
(Sir Norman Rosenthal and Ann Dumas)


Chief Curator:
Sir Norman Rosenthal, Royal Academy of Arts, London

Co-Curators:
Ann Dumas, Royal Academy of Arts, London,
Mattijs Visser, museum kunst palast, Duesseldorf

Project Manager:
Mattijs Visser, museum kunst palast

Project Assistant:
Janina Wegner-Keres, museum kunst palast

Size of exhibition:
More than 120 paintings

Lenders:
State Hermitage, St. Petersburg
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
State A.S. Pushkin Museum, Moscow
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Main Sponsor:
E.ON AG

Media Partners:
Die WELT, WELT am Sonntag

Culture partner:
WDR3

Cooperation partners: Duesseldorf Marketing & Tourism
ADAC, ITS-Städtereisen
Hotel partners: Radisson SAS Media Harbour Hotel
Holiday Inn Duesseldorf City Center Königsallee
Hilton Duesseldorf

Catalogue:
Verlag Palace-Edition will be publishing a catalogue for the exhibition, with a preface by Normal Rosenthal and Ann Dumas, as well as articles by Professor Christina Lodder, Irina Antonova, Yevgeniya Petrova, Lydia Iovleva, Albert Kostenevich, Vladimir Lenyashin, Alexei Petuchov/ Anna Posnanskaya

Price: Euro 29.00 (softcover), Euro 39.00 (hardcover)
Audio guide: German and English
Opening hours: Mon - Sun: 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Special opening hours for school classes:
Mon – Sun, starting at 9:00 a.m.

Admission price:
incl. permanent exhibition and Hentrich Glass Museum:

• Mon-Fri Euro 10.00, reduced Euro 7.50
• Sat/Sun Euro 12.00, reduced Euro 10.00

Guided tours:
Public tours daily at 11:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., Wednesdays also at 6:00 p.m.

Registration required tel. +49 (0) 211 89 90123

Visitors' office:
Offers and registration for guided tours
Tel. +49 (0) 211 89 90123

Additional exhibition venues:
January to April 2008: Royal Academy of Arts, London


The Stiftung museum kunst palast is a public-private-partnership between the state capital city of Duesseldorf, E.ON AG, METRO Group and degussa AG.

pressfolder