The Museum of Russian Impressionism presents the first Moscow retrospective of Elena Kiseleva (1878–1974), a talented artist with a complicated creative history. She is known and appreciated in her hometown of Voronezh, but not among a wider audience. This exhibition is part of the Museum of Russian Impressionism’s program showing artists whose work has, for various reasons, been forgotten and reintroduces viewers to the history of Russian art.

Her best work was made at a time of great upheaval. In 1920, Kiseleva and her family emigrated to Belgrade, where she found herself out of fashion. Forgotten during her lifetime, Kiseleva gained some recognition in the 1960s, towards the end of her life, thanks to the Kramskoy Museum of Fine Arts. Today the museum holds the largest collection of the artist’s works.

The exhibition brings together works by Kiseleva from the Kramskoy Museum of Fine Arts in Voronezh, the State Russian Museum, the Russian Academy of Arts Museum, the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and private collections.