Exhibition “Do not compare: the living is incomparable…”

On August 31, the Tropinin Museum opens the autumn-winter season and presents the exhibition “Do not compare: the living is incomparable …”.

For the first time, the public will be shown paintings and graphics of the first half of the 20th century. from the funds of the Museum of V.A. Tropinin and collections of the legendary domestic collector V. A. Dudakov. The exposition consists of 40 works. Authors: Vladimir Makovsky and Nikolai Dubovsky, Konstantin Somov and Maria Yakunchikova, Pyotr Konchalovsky and Pavel Kuznetsov, Mikhail Larionov and Natalya Goncharova, Stanislav Zhukovsky and Manuil Aladzhalov, Vitold Byalynitsky-Birulya and Sergey Gerasimov, Nikolai Koshelev and Vladimir Lebedev are representatives of Russian pictorial realism , itinerant painting and innovative artists – supporters of new forms in art, who chose symbolism and modernism, free writing of impressionism, the “stylistics” of the World of Art and the avant-garde as reference points.

The exhibition is interesting both as a selection of the paintings themselves and graphics, which were shown very little publicly, and, at first glance, an unexpected dialogue between works from the museum’s funds and the private collection of V.A. Dudakov.

The Tropinin Museum is primarily known for its valuable collection of items from the first third of the 18th – mid-19th centuries, and few people know that the museum’s funds contain works of later periods of Russian art. These works are part of the extensive collection of the museum’s founder, one of the outstanding “art hunters” of the first half of the 20th century. Felix Evgenievich Vishnevsky, whose 120th birthday is celebrated this summer. The new exhibition allows you to see the dialogue not only of different artistic paradigms in Russian art, but also the dialogue of two collectors who crossed paths in time, knew each other, but belonged to different generations.

This exhibition, like almost every one at the Tropinin Museum, is a continuation of the tradition of very close and fruitful work with the “basis of painting” (P. Picasso) – collectors.

Exhibition curator Svetlana Volkova: “Do not compare: the living is incomparable…” – this was said by Osip Mandelstam, a poet of the 20th century, and such a view of things was shaped by the culture of the century. The first quarter of the 20th passed under the sign of freedom of creativity and an apology for creative individuality. The next quarter corrected this situation. It is worth emphasizing that the works of the 1900s – 1920s from the collection of Valery Dudakov are organically included in the exhibition publication of the Museum of V.A. Tropinin. The choice of things, oriented to the individual style systems of the artists, is dictated by the desire and necessity of showing substantive and formal echoes between symbolism and the avant-garde.”

Visitors to the exhibition will be especially interested in the history of the painting “The Walk” (1908) by one of the favorite artists, Valery Dudakov. Mikhail Larionov is the creator of the first original “ism” in Russia – neo-primitivism. This piece, “Gaugin’s” in color, genre and composition, lives by its original dynamics of rhythmic repetitions and angles. Its fate is amazing: leaving Russia in 1915, the artist Larionov divided the canvas into two parts. The first, left, V. Dudakov bought from a friend of the artist Lev Zhegin, and the second was looking for about 30 years. Collector’s excitement was rewarded by the purchase of the right part at one of the foreign auctions.

The exposition also includes a rare autolithograph “Incomprehensible” (1890s), made from her own color etching by an original and talented artist, one of the first to receive a professional education. It was thanks to the young Maria Yakunchikova, who lived only 32 years old, that the color etching genre was revived in Russia.

Valery Alexandrovich Dudakov adamantly follows one of the 10 commandments of the collector, which he formulated as follows: “Do not be greedy. Let’s work for exhibitions, for publications, for study. It is thanks to such generosity that at the exhibition at the Tropinin Museum there is an opportunity to see rare things by K. Somov, N. Goncharova, M. Larionov and other outstanding Russian artists.

“Our new exhibition opens the autumn-winter season, and it is very symbolic that for the first time in the exposition space we show the experience of cooperation between the Museum of V.A. Tropinin with collector and artist Valery Aleksandrovich Dudakov. Thanks to the curator of the exhibition, Svetlana Volkova, an excellent specialist in the fine arts of the 20th century, we, together with our visitors, will reflect on the culture of the last century, where the paintings of Pavel Kuznetsov, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Boris Kustodiev, Sergey Zhukovsky and other artists from the collection of our museum and Valeriy Dudakov’s collection,” presents the concept of the new exhibition, the director of the Museum, V.A. Tropinina Olga Zhuravleva.

According to the press service of the museum.

On the picture: M. F. Larionov. Painting “Walk”