Art Bulletin ofNationalmuseumStockholm

Volume 21

From Tsars to Commissars: Russian and Soviet Painting from the Russian Museum

Per HedströmHead of Exhibitions

2 October 2014 – 11 January 2015

4Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Volume 21, 2014

Photo Credits© Palazzo d’Arco, Mantua, inv. 4494/Photo: Nationalmuseum Image Archives, from Domenico Fetti 1588/89–1623, Eduard Safarik (ed.), Milan, 1996, p. 280, fig. 82 (Figs. 2 and 9A, pp. 13 and 19)© Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (Fig. 3, p. 13)© bpk/Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/Elke Estel/Hans-Peter Klut (Figs. 4, 5B, 6B and 7B, pp. 14–17)© Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program (Figs. 8 and 10B, pp. 18 and 20)© CATS-SMK (Fig. 10A, p. 20)© Dag Fosse/KODE (p. 25)© Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design/The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo (p. 28)© SMK Photo (p. 31)© From the article ”La Tour and Lundberg’s portraits of la princesse de Rohan”, by Neil Jeffares, http://www.pastellists.com/Essays/LaTour_Rohan.pdf, 2015-09-21, (p. 40)© The National Gallery, London. Bought, Cour-tauld Fund, 1924 (p. 42)© Stockholms Auktionsverk (p. 47)© Bukowskis, Stockholm (p. 94)© Thron Ullberg 2008 (p. 108)© 2014, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg (pp. 133–134)© Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau (pp. 138–139) © Museen der Stadt Bamberg (pp. 140 and 142)© Archive of Thomas Fusenig (p. 141)© Nordiska museet, Stockholm/Karolina Kristensson (pp. 148–149)

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, is published with generous support from the Friends of the Nationalmuseum.

Nationalmuseum collaborates with Svenska Dagbladet and Grand Hôtel Stockholm. We would also like to thank FCB Fältman & Malmén.

Cover IllustrationsDomenico Fetti (1588/89–1623), David with the Head of Goliath, c. 1617/20. Oil on canvas, 161 x 99.5 cm. Purchase: The Wiros Fund. Nationalmuseum, NM 7280.

PublisherBerndt Arell, Director General

EditorJanna Herder

Editorial CommitteeMikael Ahlund, Magdalena Gram, Janna Herder, Helena Kåberg, Magnus Olausson and Lidia Westerberg Olofsson.

PhotographsNationalmuseum Photographic Studio/Linn Ahlgren, Olle Andersson, Erik Cornelius, Anna Danielsson, Cecilia Heisser, Bodil Karlsson and Sofia Persson.

Picture EditorRikard Nordström

Every effort has been made by the publisher to credit organizations and individuals with regard to the supply of photographs. Please notify the publisher regarding corrections.

Graphic DesignBIGG

LayoutAgneta Bervokk

Translation and Language EditingGabriella Berggren, Martin Naylor and Kristin Belkin.

PublishingIngrid Lindell (Publications Manager) and Janna Herder (Editor).

Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum is published annually and contains articles on the history and theory of art relating to the collections of the Nationalmuseum.

NationalmuseumBox 16176SE–103 24 Stockholm, Swedenwww.nationalmuseum.se© Nationalmuseum, the authors and the owners of the reproduced works

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exhibition/from tsars to commissars

From Tsars to Commissars: Russian and Soviet Painting from the Russian Museum

Per HedströmHead of Exhibitions

2 October 2014 – 11 January 2015

Ivan Aivazovsky (1817–1900), The Ninth Wave, 1850. Oil on canvas, 221 x 332 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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consequences of social changes and major wars. Many of the exhibited works share a narrative quality and a strong emotional expressiveness, as the monumentally epic tone was characteristic of both 19th-century realism and Stalinist propaganda art.

The exhibition was largely chronolo-gical in structure, with 19th-century art in the first room, the second room covering the period around 1900, and Russian avant- garde painting and Soviet art in the final room. Konstantin Makovsky’s magnificent rendering, Shrovetide in St Petersburg, teeming with figures, from the late 1860s served as

by the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, which has one of the world’s largest collec-tions of Russian art, and featured many of its key works.

From Tsars to Commissars showed art ori-ginating in a society that experienced enor-mous transitions in the 150 years or so cove-red by the exhibition; from the Tsardom of the 19th century, via the revolutionary years in the 1910s and 1920s, to the Stalin era and the Soviet superpower during the Cold War. Visitors encountered Russian serfs, images embodying Orthodox Christian no-tions and traditions, and portrayals of the

T h e e x h i b i t i o n The Peredvizhniki: Pioneers of Russian Painting, which opened in autumn 2011, was one of the National-museum’s most visited exhibitions in re-cent years. In 2014, the Russian exhibition From Tsars to Commissars: Russian and Soviet Painting from the Russian Museum widened the perspective. The Swedish public now had the opportunity to see what came be-fore and after the Peredvizhniki – Russian and Soviet painting from the early 1800s to late 1960s, a rich and multifaceted art sce-ne that is still unknown to many Western Europeans. The exhibition was produced

Boris Grigoriev (1886–1939), Portrait of Vsevolod Meyerhold, 1916. Oil on canvas, 247 x 168 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

Alexander Samokhvalov (1894–1971), Girl in a T-shirt, 1932. Oil, tempera on canvas, 102 x 64 cm. The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

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art and the art of the mentally ill. Filonov was prohibited by the Soviet government from exhibiting.

Russian artists have been forced to work for long periods under repressive regimes, with strict stipulations on the form and con-tent of their art. Under the tsar, censorship was harsh, and during Stalin’s time as Soviet leader, artists were expected to serve the regime. The approved Stalinist style was called socialist realism. Paintings showed Soviet progress and the resilience and de-termination of the Soviet people. Socialist realism was based on Lenin’s idea that art

a perfect introduction to the exhibition, illustrating both the Russian cultural tradi-tion (where Shrove is an important celebra-tion) and Russian 19th century realism and pictorial narrative.

The first room included several major works of Russian 19th-century art, such as Ivan Aivazovsky’s The Ninth Wave, Vasily Perov’s Pugachev’s Justice and a couple of fine genre paintings by Alexey Venetsianov. It was, of course, especially gratifying that Aivazovsky’s monumental painting could be included in the exhibition, since it is one of the most popular and sought-after works in the Russian Museum’s collection.

The second room offered several truly excellent paintings from around 1910. One highlight was Nathan Altman’s portrait of the poet Anna Achmatova, a pa-inting that clearly reveals the influence of early French modernism – and especially Cézanne – on the Russian painters. Nata-lia Goncharova’s tersely simplified winter landscape was another magnificent work in the second room, along with the absolu-te masterpiece, Boris Grigoriev’s dramatic portrait of the theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold. Meyerhold belonged to the Russian arts scene, whose members were persecuted in connection with the dogma-tic Stalinist arts programme, and was im-prisoned and murdered for not embracing the official art doctrine of socialist realism.

The internationally best known part of Russian 20th-century art history is, of cour-se, the so-called Russian avant-garde – the artists who began making purely non-figu-rative art in the 1910s. The reason for this world renown is mainly that these artists were suddenly at the front-line of the inter-national avant-garde. The groundbreaking approach of Kazimir Malevich and Wassily Kandinsky eschewed realism and the nar-rative tradition. The exhibition featured one work each of Malevich, Kandinsky and Marc Chagall, but also included works by modernists who are less well-known to the international public. One example is Pavel Filonov, who developed a distinctly personal imagery inspired by Russian folk

should be easily accessible to the great masses. It should be realistically depictive and have a clear message.

Modernist styles were perceived as bourgeois and were banned, along with art with religious or erotic subjects. Socialist re-alism also entailed that art should have an optimistic, positive mood. There were ar-tists, however, who nevertheless managed to create interesting works, despite accom-modating the demands of the Soviet regi-me. One of the most prominent of these was Alexander Deyneka, who portrayed modern industrial settings and the disas-

Interior from the exhibition From Tsars to Commissars: Russian and Soviet Painting from the Russian Museum.

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Exhibition curators: Per Hedström and Carl-Johan OlssonExhibition design: Joakim E.WerningLighting design: Gunnar BjörsExhibition technology and installation: The Technical Department at Nationalmuseum, under the supervision of Lennart KarlssonExhibition coordinator: Anne DahlströmEducation officer: Lena Eriksson

Exhibition catalogue Från tsarer till folkkommissarier: Ryskt och sovjetiskt måleri från Ryska Museet (Swedish edition); From Tsars to Commissars: Russian and Soviet painting from the Russian Museum (English edition)Nationalmusei utställningskatalog nr 672 (Nationalmuseum exhibition catalogue no. 672)ISBN (Swedish edition): 978-91-7100-854-1ISBN (English edition): 978-91-7100-855-8

often portrayed street life in the modern Soviet cities. These particular paintings by Pimenov can be seen to exemplify the art that emerged in the Soviet Union during the so-called Khrushchev Thaw – the years following Stalin’s demise, when the regime somewhat softened its grip and gave freer rein to art, literature and film.

The exhibition was designed by the Nationalmuseum’s designer Joakim E. Werning, and the works were hung in consultation with head of exhibitions Per Hedström, curator Carl-Johan Olsson and the research manager at the Russian Muse-um, Evgenia Petrova. The richly-illustrated exhibition catalogue was produced by the Russian Museum’s publishing company, Palace Editions. This exhibition would not have been possible without exceedingly generous financial support from Anne- Marie and Herbert Lembcke and their Ad Infinitum Foundation.

ters of the Second World War. Among the most powerful images in the exhibition was his painting of the charred remains of a village burned to the ground by German soldiers.

The presentation also offered several typical examples of socialist realism in its most flagrant propaganda version. Arkady Plastov’s Kolkhoz Festival shows a throng of people celebrating in one of the Soviet agricultural collectives that were introdu-ced during the Stalin era. Plentiful food, drink and revelling people fill the picture. Above the crowd is a placard with Stalin’s portrait, flanked by a banner proclaiming that life has improved. In fact, the painting illustrates a dream of the ideal life that was far from the starvation that prevailed in many of the enforced collective farms in the late-1930s.

The exhibition ended with three small paintings by Yuri Pimenov, a painter who

exhibition/from tsars to commissars

Interior from the exhibition From Tsars to Commissars: Russian and Soviet Painting from the Russian Museum.