DEPICTING THE AIR. RUSSIAN IMPRESSIONISM
14 February - 1 June
From February 14 to June 1 the large-scale exhibition ‘Depicting the Air. Russian Impressionism’ will be held on three floors of the Museum of Russian Impressionism. Whether as a main method for some artists or as a short-term amusement for others, impressionism consolidated the right to experiment in their painting. The exhibition will show works by 70 masters, from Konstantin Korovin, Stanislav Zhukovsky and Igor Grabar to Pyotr Konchalovsky and Ilya Mashkov, with separate brushstrokes combining into a single picture that allows us to comprehend how extensive and widespread this phenomenon became in Russian art culture at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries.
Today the term ‘Russian impressionism’ has become generally accepted: leading experts and institutions throughout Russia devote exhibition and publishing projects to the phenomenon, although even when the museum opened in 2016 it provoked controversy among art historians and viewers. With this project the museum does not set the task of tracing the entire path of impressionism in Russia or compiling a glossary of Russian impressionist masters. Instead the exhibition will introduce us to key features of the impressionist style and emphasise its national characteristics.
The display opens with canvases ‘depicting the air’ and revealing the nature of light. These are followed by the painters’ work with colour. Russian artists, like their French colleagues, experimented with their palette and adopted a darker spectrum unusual for the movement as a whole, with the effects of night lighting and the waters of St. Petersburg’s Neva River, for which the curator suggests the term ‘black impressionism’.
Special attention is paid to the sketches of Isaac Levitan, Leonid Pasternak and Leonard Turzhansky that were first equated to independent work by the impressionists. This section continues with plein air compositions by Victor Borisov-Musatov, Nikolai Tarkhov and David Burliuk. The ‘Workshop’ block is also dedicated to the practice of impressionism, allowing the viewer to attend classes at the Academy of Arts and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
Democratic subjects were also a discovery of impressionism: picnics, tea parties, boat rides and visits to cafés and theatres. The ‘Russian motif’ gained popularity: visitors can see how the vibrant boulevards of Paris were replaced by streets in the provincial Russian towns of Konstantin Gorbatov and Pyotr Petrovichev, and how the young peasant women painted by Abram Arkhipov appeared in portraits instead of actresses. Artists also borrowed innovative compositional techniques from photography and Japanese engraving: the works of Konstantin Kuznetsov, Igor Grabar and Vasily Perepletchikov will be presented in comparison with printed graphics.
Three floors of the museum will feature more than 150 works from 76 private and state collections from right across the country, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok and Khabarovsk: the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum and the Vyatka Art Museum named after V.M. and A.M. Vasnetsov, as well as from the museum’s own collection.
The conversation begun in the main display about conveying the light and air environment in paintings will be continued by contemporary artist Irina Korina, whose great-grandfather Alexei Korin’s pictures are also included in the exhibition. An installation showing light as a physical phenomenon will be created in the museum lobby, especially for the exhibition. The work will focus visitors’ attention on the importance of scientific discoveries in the formation of a new pictorial language.
A book about Russian impressionism will be published for the exhibition. In the programme article ‘Impressionism and Environment: the Russian Version’, art critic Irina Vakar reflects on the path of the new direction in Russia and tells how impressionist techniques and methods helped Ilya Repin, Vasily Polenov, Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov, followed by Mikhail Larionov and Robert Falk, in solving creative problems, as well as the way plein air practices influenced Russian art. The album section will be supplemented by annotations about the works collected in the exhibition, with biographical information about the artists.
In 2025 the museum will continue cooperating with the Art, Science and Sport Charity Foundation as part of the Special View support programme for visitors with visual impairments. Tactile stations will be created with the participation of our inclusive programme partner. For the upcoming exhibition their number will increase to six. Blind and visually impaired visitors can get acquainted with tactile bas-reliefs of works by Konstantin Korovin, Nikolai Feshin, Stanislav Zhukovsky, Abram Arkhipov, Igor Grabar and Ivan Kulikov, both independently and on free excursions with audio description. After the exhibition these models will be available for visitors to museums in Murom, Rybinsk, Kirov and Vladivostok.
Curator: Natalia Sviridova — Chief Curator of the Museum of Russian Impressionism.