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From February to June visitors to the Museum of Russian Impressionism have the chance to cast a backwards glance ‘through the alleys of time’ to Russian art of the 1930s — to the world of early Soviet intellectuals and aesthetes, the artists who comprised the Group of 13.

Their graphic and pictorial works featuring dynamic city life reflects the art of the old masters,yet also the principles of Impressionism nd Post-Impressionism. Guest curator Nadezhda Plungian offers a new reading of the works of Vladimir Milashevsky and Daniil Daran, Tatyana Mavrina and Nikolai Kuzmin, Nadezhda Udaltsova and Alexander Drevin. The story of this group will be complemented with works by Edgar Degas, Jean-François Millet and Othon Friesz, with whom the ‘13’ conducted a conceptual dialogue.

Named after the number of participants in their first exhibition, the Group of 13 (1929–1931) officially existed for only a few years, but the artists’ friendship and creative quest continued until the 1970s. This project will increase our knowledge of masters who chose the format of documentary drawing, chamber painting and book illustration for their statements. In contrast to the exemplary subject matter of the socialist realists, the Group of 13’s main theme was the changing everyday life: city streets and intersections with trams and people hurrying about their affairs, parks and racecourses, water stations and beaches.

Rather than reconstructing the group’s exhibitions, the museum will recreate the art laboratory in which the ‘style of the 13’ was formed and developed — a quick sketch from life, consonant with the speed of the modern age, often scribbled with a pen feather or match, without preparation or subsequent refinement. The artists did not continue the experiments of the avant-garde and distanced themselves from the tasks of proletarian art, instead their art reworked the techniques of masters from past eras and early European modernism: from Rembrandt’s intense shadows and Francisco Goya’s expressive strokes to the colour line of Edgar Degas or the instant interpretations of the Impressionists.

The eleven thematic sections of the exhibition will introduce the main representatives of the ‘13’ and outline key factors of the context in which the group worked. Part of the exhibition will be dedicated to the Leningrad circle of the poet Mikhail Kuzmin and self-taught artists Yuri Yurkun and Olga Arbenina-Hildebrandt. A separate topic will be book illustration, to which the Group of 13 brought their ‘fast drawing’ technique. On the third floor the museum will display paintings and graphics from post-war years.

Visitors will be treated to a number of discoveries: rarely exhibited works by Roman Semashkevich and Valentin Yustitsky, complemented by artistic dialogues with Maurice de Vlaminck and Louis Valtat. Also for the first time, we present a picturesque portrait of ‘13’ participant Antonina Sofronova by Vladimir Milashevsky, who is known primarily for his graphic works.

This is the first large-scale presentation of art by the Group of 13, with items from museum collections including the State Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and others. More than 300 works of graphics, painting, decorative and applied arts, and books from 17 museums and 13 private collections comprise a multi-layered tale about the fate of independent Soviet artists.

The articles collected in the catalogue by curator Nadezhda Plungian, art historians Marina Borovskaya and Alexey Petukhov, and collector and book culture researcher Mikhail Seslavinsky will complement our understanding of the Group of 13 and its place in the Soviet artistic environment, the connections with the Saratov creative community and the participants’ passion for European masters. This publication will also include archival documents and photographs, some published for the first time.

In 2024 the Art, Science and Sport Charitable Foundation will become a partner of the museum’s inclusive programme as part of ‘Un Certain Regard’, a support programme for the visually impaired. Tactile stations for blind and visually impaired visitors will be set up for a number of works in the exhibition. Upon completion of the project these models will become part of the permanent exhibitions at regional museums. The project will be accompanied by an extensive educational programme with events for adults, children and adolescents, as well as inclusive activities.

Curator: Nadezhda Plungian — PhD in History of Art, curator, teacher at the Higher School of Economics.