TUMBLEWEED

The State Russian Museum. The Benois Wing. Until 20 October 2016

The exhibition presents the oeuvre of Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and works by his contemporaries, pupils and associates. He taught in the school of E.Zvantseva in 1910-s and later was a professor in the Academy of arts. Being a teacher of painting, he also inspired his students and allies, which led to the formation of a generation of artists, united by a unique artistic vision and style.

The exhibition will comprise over 100 paintings and graphic works by various artists from the “Circle of Petrov-Vodkin”, among which are N. Lermontova, F. Shikhmanova, T. Kupervasser, A.Lappo-Danilevsky, L. Chupyatov, A. Zernov, A. Efros, I. Lizak, V. Malagis and others.

VDNH. Pavilion 15: Radioelectronics. Until 23 October 2016

To learn about Russian cinema from A to Z: from film producing to dramaturgy, from the contributions of directors, cameramen, and artists, performances of actors to montages, special effects and noises that is what the Beyond the Dreams exhibition offers. The exhibition will form part of the official Russian Cinema Year programme and will not only show the film-making process through key professions but will also closely introduce Muscovites and guests of the capital to each stage of film production by using pre-revolutionary Soviet and Russian cinema experience. The exhibition will display dozens of original items from the collections of the Polytechnic Museum, Cinema Museum, Lenfilm Russia's first film production company as well as major contemporary film production companies and private collections of the famous film-makers. These are archive shots from filming locations, scripts and camera reports, legendary cameras, sound-recording and projection apparatuses, sketches and scenery models, costumes and accessories, fragments of films and theme tunes. The visitors will also learn fascinating facts about the history and theory of cinema that will demonstrate experimental paths of Russian film art and discoveries that were ahead of time. And dozens of popular and experimental motion pictures – from the first silent productions by Vasily Goncharov and Vladimir Kasyanov to future blockbusters that are about to be released will meet for the first time in a dialogic interaction forming a meta-context of Russian cinema across various ideas, images, structures, and motifs.

The Hermitage Museum (The General Staff Building). Until 30 October 2016

The Hermitage exhibits Olympia in a broad historical context: it is accompanied by works from the Hermitage collection that allows to explore the depiction of a nude woman in art. Crucial works of this theme are The Birth of Venus by Botticelli, Venus of Urbino by Titian (Uffizi Gallery) and Sleeping Venus by Giorgione (Dresden Gallery), which are represented in the etchings from the State Hermitage collection. These masterpieces gave rise to the most important European art image of beautiful nudity, the gradual transformation of which led to the emergence of Olympia three and a half centuries later. The theme of female nudity is represented at the exhibition by an outstanding work Danae by Titian, twenty engravings of works of the great Venetian and French artists of XVII-XIX centuries and a picture by Francois Boucher from the State Hermitage collection. The later references to the image of a naked woman made by masters of romanticism and the Salon of Fine Arts make it possible to evaluate Manet's courage in overcoming the Salon and academic routines and his incredible breakthrough towards the truth of new painting. It is appropriate to identify all the works at the Hermitage exhibition as the genre of nude, judging only by absence of clothes, no matter what characters are depicted.

Multimedia Art Museum. 16 Ostozhenka St. Until 13 November 2016

The Russian avant-garde of the twentieth century is a unique phenomenon not only in Russian, but in world culture. The amazing creative energy accumulated by the artists of this great age is still providing nourishment for artistic culture today and all who have dealings with the art produced by Russian Art Nouveau. Alexander Rodchenko was indisputably one of the main generators of creative ideas and the general spiritual aura of the age. Painting, design, theatre, cinema, typography and photography, all areas invaded by the powerful talent of this strong, handsome man, were transformed, opening up radically new paths of development. The early 1920s was an Â«intermediate age», to quote Viktor Shklovsky, one of the finest critics and theoreticians of the day, a period when, albeit briefly, illusively, there was a resonance between artistic and social experiment. It was at this time, 1924, that photography was invaded by Alexander Rodchenko, already a well-known artist with the slogan «Our duty is to experiment» placed firmly at the centre of his aesthetic. The result of this invasion was a fundamental change of ideas about the nature of photography and the role of the photographer. Conceptual thinking was introduced into photography. Instead of just being the reflection of reality, photography also became a device for the visual representation of dynamic intellectual constructions.

Tretyakov Gallery, 10 Krymsky Val. Until 20 November 2016

The Tretyakov Gallery is preparing a large-scale monographic exhibition of Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900), one of the best-known and most popular painters in Russia. His art includes the themes that touched many generations of artists: the attempts to depict infinite, limitless spaces, the desire to capture the ever-changing nature in a given moment of time. From the large number of works created by Aivazovsky (based on his own estimate, approximately 6000), the exhibition presents about 100 paintings and 50 graphic works. The curators' selection will allow the viewers to see the best examples of Aivazovsky paintings: seascapes, battle scenes, graphics works. The exhibition will display simultaneously four most significant paintings of the artist: The Rainbow (1873), The Black Sea (1881, both from Tretyakov Gallery), The Ninth Wave (1850), The Wave (1889, both from State Russian Museum). For the first time, the art lovers will see the large format painting On the shores of the Caucasus (1885, Tretyakov Gallery) that has never been on show before. The documentary section will introduce Aivazovsky as a patron of arts, the first honorary citizen of Theodosia. The exhibition will also include models of ships, compasses, globes, telescopes.

The State Russian Museum. The Benois Wing. Until 4 December 2016

The oeuvre of Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), world-renowned Russian artist will be for the first time presented with special emphasis made on the national origins of his early figurative works and abstract paintings of 1910-s. The exhibition dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the artist will comprise his graphic and painterly works alongside with the pieces by his prominent contemporaries (Ivan Bilibin, Elena Polenova, Sergei Malyutin, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich, David Burliuk, Alexey Yawlensky, Marianna Verevkina and others). These artists participated with Kandinsky in the Izdebsky Salons and The Blue Rider group exhibitions and reflected the symbolism, expressionism and art nouveau trends. The exhibition will also include the examples of traditional Russian folk art (distaffs, birch bark boxes, embroidered towels, toys, carved wooden items) that largely influenced the stylistic and ideological principles of Wassily Kandinsky's art.

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Main Building). Until 11 December 2016

It is for the first time in history that 11 famous artworks by Raphael leave the Uffizi Galleriy and the Palatine Gallery in Italy. The exhibition includes 8 paintings and 3 drawings - among them the legendary Raphael's self-portrait (1506), a pair of portraits of Agnolo Doni and his wife Maddalena Doni (1506), The Madonna del Granduca (1505), and The Ecstasy of Saint Cecilia (1516-1517). The theme of the exhibition is human representation in portraits or self-portraits by the celebrated Renaissance painter. Make sure you buy tickets in advance online or come to the museum on a working day in the morning to avoid long queues.

VDNH, Pavilion 1 Central. Until 10 January 2017

The exhibition is part of the Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age project that made a splash last year in the UK. The idea was initially conceived by the Science Museum in London back in 2011, and its supervisors managed to get together quite a unique collection thanks to cooperation with the ROSIZO Russian State Museum and Exhibition Centre, including the original landers of Vostok 6 and Voskhod 1, an engineering model of Lunokhod 1, and the personal belongings of Sergei Korolev and Yuri Gagarin. After four years of preparations, Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age was opened in autumn of 2015 and was a “true miracle” according to The Daily Telegraph. The tickets even sold out several months before the exhibition opened. And today, the Polytechnic Museum offers all VDNH visitors the chance to see this wonderful collection. By the way, many of the exhibits (like the spacesuits the first cosmonauts used, landers, interplanetary landers and rare archive documents) have never left the walls of secret organisations. The Russian exhibition is based mainly upon the British concept, but it also has some more interesting exhibits and is notable for its bold colour scheme and artistic layout. Besides, this 'cosmic' exhibition is hosted by one of the most remarkable buildings of the Russian capital, i.e. VDNH Pavilion No. 1. This 100-meter high (including the spire) building is right in line with classical Russian Empire stylistic traditions, and its closest equal in terms of style is the famous Admiralty tower in St Petersburg.