Today at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Krymsky Val exhibition at Alexander Shevchenko

Today, 23 March, the State Tretyakov Gallery on the Crimean shaft (Halls 80-82) will be the opening exhibition of works by Alexander Shevchenko.

Alexander Shevchenko (1883-1948) - painter, graphic artist, teacher - belongs to the galaxy of artists, whose work marked the highest flowering of Russian Art 1910-30-ies. It works Shevchenko was presented to Stalin as an example of formalism. His anniversary exhibition in April 1933 at the Museum of Fine Arts was abruptly and prematurely closed 10 days after the opening day without explanation.

AV Shevchenko was not one of the discoverers and inventors of new ways, but he has accumulated a number of important trends, individually and uniquely bends them into his art. Keen artistic intuition helped him to sensitively perceive the main problems of time, constantly seek new means of expression, techniques, to get involved in the experiments.

AV Shevchenko received artistic training at the Stroganov Art School (1898-1907 , with a break), Paris (1905-1906) at the Academy R. Julien, and then in the studio E. Carriera. Exhibited in the Salon of Independents (1906). In 1907-1909 he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, along with AV Kuprin , R. Falk , DD Burliuk , was especially close to MF Larionov .

In 1910, after the first exhibition of "Jack of Diamonds" at the split of the Left artists AV Shevchenko joined the group M. Larionov and Goncharova , in 1911 participated in organizing the exhibition" The donkey's tail. But even then it was noted that AV Shevchenko stands apart from the group that in his works there is still a link with old traditions and forms of Cubists, Futurists and radiant entered into the picture strictly academically constructed. In 1913, AV Shevchenko took part in the exhibition "Target", popularized the art primitives, published a pamphlet "neo-primitivism. His theory. Its possible. His accomplishments, "Principles of Cubism and other movements in art of all time. He participated in important avant-garde exhibitions «№ 4", "Youth Union", etc. After the revolution, actively worked in the People's Commissariat of Fine Arts, taught at the 1-X State of free art workshops (GSHM), Higher Art, the Museum organized a beautiful culture. In 1922 he joined the company "Makovets", in 1926 organized society "shop painters, from 1932 - Member of the Society of Moscow Artists (MKO).

When the" leftist artists rejected easel art, AV Shevchenko was the protector of the principles easel, stood the picturesque tradition of high culture. In the first half of 1920, solving the problem of easel paintings, where everything is subordinated to the strict compositional system, it is focused on the creative legacy of Paul Cézanne.

In the late 1920's - early 1930's the artist again appealed to the primitive, for art Pirosmani , was influenced by neo-classical European trends, Picasso, Derain, de Chirico, and in his work formed a kind of variant of Art Deco, which proved very organic for his talents.

In the last decade of his life, Shevchenko has repeatedly been criticized for "formalism esthete and exposure to western European modernism but continued to paint, creating landscapes and genre in the spirit of the quiet art. In the late 1930's - 1940's it started to interest the problem of lighting - day and night, reflections of sunlight on trees and people's faces. Instead of conventional pictorial plane in the pictures appeared spatial environment of that definition softened contours and volumes, the figures in his works are not conventionally composed environment, but in particular - surrounded by nature.

extremely important component of creativity AV Shevchenko was graphic. He received the best in terms of development of graphic techniques at the Stroganov School of Education, and no coincidence of all the many schools, where he studied, the artist most admired precisely Stroganovka. At some stages of the graphics is leading - for example in the early, impressionistic and symbolist period (1906-1910). A significant phenomenon in the work of AV Shevchenko, the 1930 became his monotypes - a kind of printed graphics, where a matrix of glass or metal applied to the image with oil paint and then made its mark on the paper.

The proposed exhibition shows the evolution and the highest creative achievements of the wizard. For the first time after 77 years on display since the complex long-term restoration of the canvas "They" (1933). This painting, depicting a "decaying Europe and western economic crisis, was presented at the personal exhibition in 1933.

The present exhibition includes more than a hundred and fifty works of painting and graphic art from the State Tretyakov Gallery, State Russian Museum, State Museum of Fine Arts. Pushkin and several private collections.

exhibition is open to the public from March 24 to May 16.

Source : a press release of the State Tretyakov Gallery