“Each work of art is absolutely self-sufficient” – Kommersant FM

Kommersant FM columnist Dmitry Butkevich talks about what is remarkable about the exhibition organized by the Nashchokin House gallery.

The Nikolai Ostrovsky Museum on Tverskaya Street is hosting a personal exhibition of the famous film artist Pyotr Pashkevich. The exhibition is held by the Nashchokin House gallery. Those who were already interested in the Moscow artistic process 15-20 years ago undoubtedly remember this gallery on Vorotnikovsky Lane. The two-story building, which actually once belonged to Alexander Pushkin’s friend Pavel Nashchokin, delighted viewers with very high-quality exhibitions.

Exhibitions by Mikhail Shemyakin, Oleg Tselkov, Dmitry Plavinsky, Ernst Neizvestny, and Yuri Cooper were held here. Even Frida Kahlo exhibited here for the first time in Russia. This, of course, was mainly the merit of the owner of the gallery, Natalya Rurikova. Natalya Petrovna dedicated the current exhibition to the memory of her father:

“In the last year, I suddenly decidedly realized that this was necessary. My age, so to speak, already speaks about this and suggests that we need to leave something to our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And it was such a strong feeling that I just zealously took up this matter. And the main thing for me is that I lived my dad’s life, which I saw from afar, despite the fact that we lived in the same apartment.”

The exhibition amazed me: carpet hanging, Pashkevich’s graphics, sometimes black and white, sometimes color. You start to look closely, and plots from familiar films from childhood appear. “The Village Teacher” (1947), “Volunteers” (1958), “Hero of Our Time” (1967), “Crime and Punishment” (1969), “TASS is authorized to declare” (1984).

Clear depiction of scenes of future films, the finest elaboration of details. At the same time, there is a strange feeling – each work of art, there is no other way to say it, is absolutely self-sufficient. Here is the house of smugglers from Lermontov’s Taman, here is the house of the heroine of a rural teacher, here are Dostoevsky’s harsh sketches of St. Petersburg. Everything is extremely realistic. I think future theater and film artists should definitely be taken to the exhibition.