press release musée cantonal des beaux

PRESS RELEASE
MUSÉE CANTONAL DES BEAUX-ARTS DE LAUSANNE
Lausanne, April 2014
We are pleased to invite you to the press conference of the exhibition
Magic of Russian Landscape.
Masterpieces from the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
on Thursday 22 May 2014 at 11 am
Tatiana Karpova, vice-director of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, will be present.
GENERAL
INFORMATION
Opening reception
Curator
Media contact
Thursday 22 May 2014 at 7 pm, Aula, Palais de Rumine
Tatiana Karpova, vice-director of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and
Catherine Lepdor, chief curator of the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne
Loïse Cuendet, [email protected]
Tel. : +41 (0)21 316 34 48
To download press material: www.mcba.ch > press relations
Username: mcba-presse / Password: gpresse
Address
Opening hours
Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Palais de Rumine, place de la Riponne 6
CH-1014 Lausanne
Tel. : +41 (0)21 316 34 45
Fax. : +41 (0)21 316 34 46
[email protected]
www.mcba.ch
Tuesday – Friday: 11 am – 6 pm
Saturday – Sunday: 11 am – 5 pm
Closed on Monday
Ascension Day, Whit Monday and 1st August : 11 am – 5 pm
Admission
Adults: CHF 10.–
Pensioners, students, apprentices: CHF 8.–
Under 16: free
1st Saturday of the month : free
Access
Metro M2: station Riponne – Maurice Béjart
Bus 1, 2: stop at Rue Neuve
Bus 7, 8: stop at Riponne
Press release
Magic of Russian Landscapes. Masterpieces from the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
mcb-a Lausanne
Page 2
Magic of Russian Landscape.
Masterpieces from the State Tretyakov Galery, Moscow
23 May – 5 October 2014
THE EXHIBITION
The Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, is hosting an exceptional collection
of works originating from the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Some seventy
paintings illustrate the glory days of the Russian landscape school between 1855
and 1917, from the beginning of the reign of Tsar Alexander II to the October
Revolution.
While many people see the contribution of the Russian school to modernism
as beginning with the avant-garde in the second decade of the 20th century, the
break with academic art started in the mid-19th century. A new generation of artists
refused to submit to the diktat of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg.
Abandoning Biblical and mythological subjects, they set out to discover Russian
customs and landscapes, revisiting their past in the highly politicised context of the
assertion of a national identity, the abolition of serfdom and the belief held by the
intelligentsia that art could make a decisive contribution towards building a modern,
democratic society.
In this context of profound change, landscape played a crucial role. For contemporaries, along with genre painting, it was landscape that could best convey
the Russian “soul” and Russian “land”. At the time of Russia’s greatest territorial
expansion, painters set about discovering the seas, mountains and forests of the
huge Empire. They observed the sky, the passage of the seasons from dawn to
nightfall, they were keen to depict peasant customs, and rural and urban architecture. Rejecting the Italianate landscapes in vogue up to that time, the new school
drew inspiration from historical realism (the 17th-century Dutch school) as well as
contemporary examples of realism (the Düsseldorf school, the Barbizon school,
Impressionism). Stylistically these tendencies nurtured a vision of nature that was
certainly realistic, but also powerfully narrative and symbolic.
The landscape painting of this period presents a complex mosaic, and is striking
for its diversity, the strong artistic personalities who represent it, and the dynamism
of its development. Its different strands include lyrical landscape or “mood landscape”
(Savrasov, Kamenev, Levitan, Polenov), a continuation of Romantic landscape
(Aivazovsky, Vassiliev, Kuindzhi), the naturalistic and documentary tendency
(Shishkin), and finally the academic tendency (Lagorio, Bogoliubov, Mechtcherski).
Maintaining close links with the writers of the golden age of Russian literature
(Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky), and the musicians in The Five group
(Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Mussorgsky), as well as a new generation of art critics
(Stasov), the artists represented in the exhibition were members of the Society of
Travelling Art Exhibitions, a means of making their art known to a wider public, or
they maintained close links with it. The Itinerants or Wanderers organized exhibitions that stopped in the main cities of the Empire: apart from St Petersburg and
Moscow, cities including Orel, Kiev, Kharkov, Kichiniov, Odessa, and Warsaw.
Their works were collected by a new type of patron, no longer emerging from the
aristocracy, but from the Muscovite business or industrial middle classes, people
like Savva Mamontov, who gathered artists from what was known as the Abramtsevo
artistic circle, or Pavel Tretyakov, the greatest collector of Russian Realist art.
Tretyakov founded the first national Russian art gallery which he gave to the city of
Moscow in 1892. Today the State Tretyakov Gallery, the organizer of the exhibition
to be seen in Lausanne, along with the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg,
holds the largest collection of Russian art in the world.
Press release
Magic of Russian Landscapes. Masterpieces from the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
mcb-a Lausanne
Page 3
Some themes
and their main representatives
THE FOREST
Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898, ill. 11) was called the “patriarch of the forest” by his
contemporaries. He was the main representative of the objective tendency in
Realism, and his epic art, monumental and resolutely optimistic, is based on a
scientific analysis of nature. His language is clear and precise. His favourite subject
is the oak forest, or conifers which are evergreen. The season he prefers is summer,
and the time of day he likes best is noon. His world rested on values that were
fundamental to him: the soil, his native country, the people, the splendour of life.
THE SEA
Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900, ill. 1), a tutelary figure, built his reputation on his
exceptional virtuosity in depicting the sea, storms and shipwrecks. He was extraordinarily productive (he painted nearly 6000 pictures, the majority of them monumental), and carried the heritage of Neo-Classicism and Romanticism on right
through the 19th century. Thus the sea for him was both a metaphor for the unpredictable nature of the vagaries of destiny and a symbol of a power that cannot be
subdued, that of a people seeking to gain their freedom.
THE SKY
Isaac Levitan (1860-1900, ill. 6) is one of the main representatives of lyrical landscape or “mood landscape”. He was a close friend of the writer Anton Chekhov, the
two men being linked by their lyrical apprehension of nature, and their veneration
for beauty, for the mystery of the world. Levitan’s painting, extremely constructed
and static in its forms, vigorous in its treatment, results from observations that are
synthesized in the studio. Its emotive, solemn character is conveyed by the
juxtaposition of broad brushstrokes and the use of wide coloured surfaces.
THE NOCTURNES
SPRING
SUMMER
Arkhip Kuindzhi (1842-1910, ill. 3), one of the most original painters of his generation, was fascinated by the way in which nature is transfigured by light. He was
dubbed the “adorer of the sun and the moon”. The synthesizing treatment of forms,
the transformation of volume into silhouette, and the intensification of the contrasts
of light and colour mean that his moonlit landscapes resemble decorative panels or
theatre sets, making them precursors of Art Nouveau, and him a fellow traveller of
the Symbolists.
Prior to Aleksei Savrasov (1830-1897, ill. 10), nature in Russia was not thought
worthy of being depicted. The landscapes of Italy were more admired. Savrasov
was the inventor of the “motif” of spring, no longer the season for lovers’ agitation,
but a special metaphor for renewal, the political and societal changes so much
hoped for at the time of the abolition of serfdom. This motif would be very popular after him, repeated in painting by artists from Igor Grabar to Mikhail Larionov,
and in music in works ranging from Snegurochka – The Snow Maiden – by Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov to the Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky.
Ilya Repin (1844-1930, ill. 9 and poster), the best known of the Itinerant painters, was
the movement’s spearhead, and its showcase abroad. His work was influenced
by French Impressionism during the time he spent in Paris. A subtle colourist and
a brilliant observer of physiognomies, he loved life in all its manifestations. His
rustic scenes of life in the dacha attracted reproaches from his friend the writer Leo
Tolstoy; in his view, the artist should put himself at the service of society, work to
educate it, and contribute to its moral improvement.
Press release
Magic of Russian Landscapes. Masterpieces from the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
mcb-a Lausanne
Page 4
WINTER
42 artists
represented
in the exhibition
Coming from the generation following that of the first Itinerant painters, Boris Kustodiev
(1878-1927, ill. 4) was one of Ilya Repin’s pupils. He belonged to the Union of Russian
Artists, a Muscovite association in which painting acquired greater diversity of colours,
and broke free of heavy, sombre hues to become lighter and sunnier. These painters
whose works strike a major key are notable for their moral liveliness, their optimistic
view of the world, and their faith in the future. Kustodiev’s winter scenes have great
affinities with the art of the lacquer miniatures from Palekh.
Ivan Aivazovsky
Boris Kustodiev
Ilya Repin
Abram Arkhipov
Nikolai Kuznetsov
*Aleksei Savrasov
Vasily Baksheev
Olga Lagoda-Shishkina
Valentin Serov
Alexander Beggrov
Lev Lagorio
Vladimir Sherwood
Aleksei Bogoliubov
Isaac Levitan
*Ivan Shishkin
Nikolay Dubovskoy
Arseniy Mechtcherski
Konstantin Somov
Igor Grabar
* Grigoriy Myasoyedov
Rufim Sudkovski
*Lev Kamenev
Mikhail Nesterov
Vasily Surikov
Aleksandr Kisseliov
Ilya Ostroukhov
Pyotr Utkin
*Mikhail Klodt
von Jürgenburg
Vasily Perepletchikov
Fyodor Vasilyev
*Vasily Perov
Apollinary Vasnetsov
Konstantin Pervukhin
Vasily Vereshchaguin
Nikolai Pimonenko
Konstantin Yuon
Vasily Polenov
Stanislav Zhukovsky
Konstantin Korovin
Iosif Krachkovsky
Konstantin Kryjitski
Arkhip Kuindzhi
(*) founding members of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions (1870-1923)
The exhibition has been organized with the generous support of the Honorary
Consulate of the Russian Federation in Lausanne, to coincide with the 200th
anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and
Switzerland.
Press release
Magic of Russian Landscapes. Masterpieces from the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
mcb-a Lausanne
Page 5
Events and activities
CATALOGUE
AUDIO-GUIDE
DISCOVERYBOOKLET
LECTURES
AT 6.30 PM
free
(in French)
Magie du paysage russe.
Chefs-d’œuvre de la Galerie nationale Trétiakov, Moscou
Foreword by Frederik Paulsen, Irina Lebedeva and Bernard Fibicher, and texts by
Tatiana Karpova and Catherine Lepdor. Lausanne, Musée cantonal des BeauxArts, Milan, Editions 5 Continents.
CHF 38.– / CHF 45.– after the exhibition
In French and English, free
Activities in the exhibition
From 7 years, free
12 June: Between East and West. Russian art in the second half of the 19th
century in search of a national identity, by Lada Umstätter, director of the
Musée des Beaux-Arts of La Chaux-de-Fonds.
4 September: Between a duty of realism and a desire for modernity. Russian literature at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th,
by Jean-Philippe Jaccard, lecturer on Russian literature and civilisation at the
University of Geneva.
11 September: A new art seeking to rediscover Holy Russia; photographs in
Russia, 1840-1914, by Dominique de Font-Réaulx, head curator at the Louvre,
director of the Musée Eugène-Delacroix
CONCERT
AND LECTURE
AT 3 PM
free
LAUSANNE JARDINS
FINAL EVENT
RUSSIAN TALES
AT 3 PM
GUIDED TOURS
At 12.30 pm
At 6.30 pm
At 3 pm
In Russian, at 3 pm
4 October: Piano solo and commentary on the works, played by Meglena
Tzaneva, concert pianist, and Eva Kouvandyjieva, art historian (in French).
The programme includes works by Tchaikovsky, Balakirev, Borodin and
Rachmaninoff.
13 September: Visit to 7 gardens in the area and commentary on the works at the
Museum by Matthieu Jaccard, architectural historian (in French).
Starts at 11 am, lasts 2 hours.
(Enrolment necessary: [email protected])
5 October, by the story-tellers of L’oreille qui parle
From 5 years
5 June, 26 June, 3 July, 24 July, 21 August.
19 June, 17 July, 31 July, 14 August, 28 August, 2 October.
9 June (Whit Monday).
18 September, with Lada Umstätter, director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de La
Chaux-de-Fonds.
Press release
Magic of Russian Landscapes. Masterpieces from the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
mcb-a Lausanne
Page 6
PRESS IMAGES
Poster: see front page
1
2
Ivan Aivazovsky
Stormy sea, 1868
Oil on canvas, 54,2 x 65 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
Konstantin Korovin
Northern idyll, 1892
Oil on canvas, 115 x 155,5 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
3
4
Arkhip Kuindzhi
Mount Elbrus. Moonlit night, 1890-1895
Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 37,7 x 56,8 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
Boris Kustodiev
Carnival, 1916
Oil on canvas, 62,7 x 125,2 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
5
6
Nikolai Kuznetsov
Feast Day, 1879
Oil on canvas, 55,3 x 98 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
Isaac Levitan
Above eternal peace, 1893
Oil on canvas, 96,5 x 129 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
Press release
Magic of Russian Landscapes. Masterpieces from the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
mcb-a Lausanne
Page 7
PRESS IMAGES
7
8
Grigoriy Myasoyedov
The Road in the rye, 1881
Oil on canvas, 66,8 x 147,8 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
Vasily Polenov
The burnt forest, 1881
Oil on canvas, 89,7 x 170 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
9
10
Ilya Repin
On the boundary path.
V. A. Repina and her children, 1879
Oil on canvas, 61,5 x 48 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
Aleksei Savrasov
Rustic View, 1867
Oil on canvas, 64 x 100 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
11
12
Ivan Shishkin
Countess Mordvinova’s forest. Peterhof, 1891
Oil on canvas, 84 x 110,5 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
Konstantin Yuon
March sun, 1915
Oil on canvas, 108 x 143,3 cm
© Moscow, State Tretyakov Gallery
Press release
Magic of Russian Landscapes. Masterpieces from the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
mcb-a Lausanne
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