The Fine Art Gallery showed a dramatic selection from the collection of the last director of the historic Manezh

Portal doors, conflict still life and portrait of a hero

The last director of the historic Manezh, Stanislav Karakash, died just over a year ago at the age of 78. The fire of 2004 in the central exhibition hall of Moscow, which Karakash had been in charge of since 1994, played a fatal role in his fate. Experiences because of what happened undermined his health – for many years Karakash struggled with Parkinson’s disease, in the end she took over. But there was a picturesque “double”, once created by Tatyana Nazarenko on plywood. It is he who meets visitors to the exhibition “Choice” in the gallery “Fine Art”. Stanislav Karakash stands as if alive among the works of artists with whom he has developed a deeply personal relationship.

Fine Art Gallery is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a series of projects showing collections of people close to the art site. We started with exhibitions of artists who grew up in front of Marina Obraztsova and Irina Filatova, who founded the gallery at the dawn of the 90s. Last year, projects by Dmitry Shorin and Timofey Smirnov took place. Now it has come to the collectors with whom the gallery has developed a personal relationship over the years. Among them is Stanislav Karakash, who, like Irina Filatova, is no longer in this world. He continues to live in his collection.

Stanislav Karakash came to the artistic world from the theater, and this is felt at the exhibition. I chose works from his collection of Marina Obraztsova. The exposition turned out to be a kind of peaceful and at the same time dramatic scenery, against which stands the figure of Stanislav Yuryevich.

Most of all here are images of doors and windows – they are like an exit to some other world, another reality. Here is a lopsided open door, painted by Semyon Agroskin in 2006. It is executed in sad greenish tones and leads to unknown blackness. But Andrey Krasulin’s “Stool” – the picture also resembles a portal. In contrast to this work on the verge of figurativeness and abstraction, Leonid Semeyko’s window is drawn with the utmost precision: we see every fold of the curtain, every bend of the Art Nouveau mansion’s opening, we distinguish every brick of the wall. But even here we find ourselves face to face with an empty and unknown. Karakash himself stands in the corner between a painting with a door to a dilapidated historical building, painted by Tamara Gudzenko, and a watercolor landscape by Anatoly Slepyshev, filled with expression and movement.

Among the doors-portals there are also works of a different content, which play out their plot against the background of these scenery. In the most prominent place is Tatiana Nazarenko’s painting “Village Joys”. Before us is a man and a woman with empty faces and glasses. There is no joy in the images of these people, but there is a closeness between them that saves them from the surrounding melancholy.

In the painting “Conflict” (1998), Valentin Gidulyanov depicts the confrontation between a fork and a spoon – both cutlery are unnaturally curved and seem to be heated. Surprise and irony with a touch of sadness can be read in the faces of the characters in Timofey Smirnov’s painting “Wait for me and I’ll be back …”, based on the well-known painting by Ilya Repin “They didn’t wait.” A pensive angel flies over schoolchildren looking somewhere to the side …

The collection of Stanislav Karakash was formed spontaneously, by chance. Many artists gave him works, he bought others out of gratitude for participating in his projects. Marina Obraztsova chose individual works from this picturesque massif, which together turned into a dedication to a person who played a role in the history of Russian culture.

“One day, in 2006, he conceived the musical Snow White,” says widow Tatyana Karakash. – The artists sang their own role, each painted their own tree, from which the forest grew. Snow White was Tatyana Nazarenko. The roles were learned, the trees were written, but Stanislav Yurievich fell ill and had to cancel everything. All of these authors are in the exhibition.

– What did he do before Manezh and what brought him to the central exhibition hall as a director?

– He is a production designer, graduated from the Moscow Art Theater School. For many years he worked in various theaters – on the Taganka, in the Moscow City Council, the Stanislavsky Theater. The theatrical career ended when he became the director of the Jewish center. In the 1990s, he came to Manege to the Art Myth exhibition, he liked it very much, as a result he was invited to the position of Manege director, where he began to make the Art Manege fair. Gradually, the fair gained momentum and weight.

– The fire of 2004, which destroyed the historic building, changed the fate of Stanislav Yuryevich. Did he resign himself?

The fire left a heavy mark. During it, two firefighters died. Stanislav Yurievich was very worried. A criminal case was opened on the fact of the fire and death of people. All this was not easy and led to illness. But he did not give up, he worked at the Maly Manezh, and after two years as an executive director at the Museum of Architecture, and then completely left.

– Portrait of Stanislav Yurievich by Tatyana Nazarenko. When did he appear?

– Tanya has been making similar figures on plywood since the 1990s. I came up with them for the retrospective “Transition” in the Tretyakov Gallery. Similar figures of different people were at her exhibition “The Future is in the Past” at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2020. Once she had an exhibition at the Manezh and for her she painted a portrait on plywood of my husband. He met all visitors at the entrance. Now he is gone, and the portrait goes to exhibitions – instead of him.