Agniya Sterligova, Ekaterina Alexandrova, Alexander Larin
Graphic design: Denis Dmitrienko
Photo: Ksenia Nam
Project implementation: MKS
An exhibition project gave birth to a long-term program to include major exhibition projects in Kazan and Moscow. The exhibition features the most prominent artists and sculptors of the previous century, and spans several decades (1900─1920s) full of creative quests, discoveries and conquests in the field of art and culture. This was a time with an unprecedented variety of new artistic styles, when Mikhail Vrubel, Konstantin Korovin, Mikhail Larionov, Pyotr Konchalovsky and others touched off new style trends that largely determined the image of their epoch.
The six-hall exhibition enfilade of the Hermitage Kazan Center housed more than 80 oeuvres provided by the courtesy of the Tretyakov Gallery and the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan. The resulting exposition tells a story about a quest for beauty in the confinements of art, and a story about the aesthetic ideals of the time and the awakening of the rebellious and multi-faceted 20th century.
The items presented showed a wide range of the creative energy of artists sharing a figurative art concept. Each hall – Symbolism, Impressionism, Neo-primitivism and Donkey Tail, Jack of Diamonds, and After the Revolution – unites like-minded artists who, as a rule, shared aesthetic views with one another.
The architectural solution of the exposition involved incredibly scrupulous work on colors and details to coincide with the existing design of the halls and patterns of public movement. Several central island elements highlight the key oeuvres and divide the exhibition space into segments where necessary.