ET, June 28 - August 25, 2013
Nadvornaya Gallery of the Winter Palace,
Halls № № 334-342

The Winter Palace, an exhibition "Utopia and Reality. El Lissitzky, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, "prepared by the State Hermitage Museum in collaboration with the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where there is the largest collection of works by El Lissitzky outside Russia.

exposition presented in the the Year of Russia in the Netherlands and the Netherlands in Russia - 2013, organized by the Project "Hermitage 20/21", a large-scale program to expand the collection of art of the XX and XXI centuries in the Hermitage and presentation of works by contemporary artists. The exhibition features many installations, drawings, paintings, sketches, models, photographs from various museums and private collections, with comments artists.

El Lissitzky Proun 1E City. 1919-1921 Lithograph Collection Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands Source: hermitagemuseum.org

Ilya Kabakov Ukrashatel Maligin. 1972-1975 Album of 72 pages collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov Source: hermitagemuseum.org

El Lissitzky (1890-1941) - one of the greatest masters of the Russian avant-garde artist, architect, book illustrator, photographer, master of the poster, the reformer design of the exhibition space , teacher and theoretician of the new art.

Ilya Kabakov ( b. 1933) - one of the most famous and popular Russian artists who entered the classics of modern art. Kabakov became known in the West as the author of a particular genre of "total installations" consisting of a combination of pictures, texts, objects and sounds. Currently, the artist and his wife Emilia Kabakov lives in New York and is a U.S. citizen. The works on display are Kabakov of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tretyakov Gallery Museum Bakhrushina; Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, as well as from private collections.

Exposition unfolds as a parallel opposition between art and the avant-garde, representing the Soviet utopia, and Moscow conceptualism, as the art of the Soviet reality. Original dialogue between artists passes through a suite of rooms, divided into seven main themes: "Space", "purity of form", "Victory over the life of", "Monument to the leader", "Transforming Life," "Faith in the implementation of the future", "The Artist as reformer "(El Lissitzky). With these themes come into the discussion Kabakov works, exhibited in sections: "Voices in the void," "Trash," "Life won", "Monument to the tyrant," "The Flight of Life" and "Unrealized Utopia", "The Artist as reflective character" .

El Lissitzky Proun. 1922-1923 Paper, gouache, pencil Collection Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands Source: hermitagemuseum.org

ILYA Kabakov Landscape with mountains. 1989 Masonite, oil, enamel, objects (clothing) collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov Source: hermitagemuseum.org

According to the Elias and Emilia Kabakov: "In terms of age both artists are completely opposite direction of XX century: its beginning and its end. But more importantly, the conceptual content of the two periods: the period of hope for new and undeniably positive change and a period of complete lack of hope and presentation changes which tend to be negative and disappointing. This fault also shows the dual concept of the exhibition: to show visitors the main "opposition", in which each artist will be presented in a visual material, as well as introduce the artist in the texts - as a "developer" of the contrast ».

One of the key themes deployed in the famous installation by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov's" The Man flown away into space from his apartment "(1985). The exhibition contrasted her paintings "Proun" Lissitzky, according to which: "Our life is now acquires a new concrete foundation for all communist nations. Thanks to the "Proun" on this foundation will build a monolithic communist city, where people will live all over the world ».

Author of the exhibition - Charles Esche, director of the Van Abbe Museum. Curators of the exhibition: Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the Department of Contemporary Art at the State Hermitage Museum, Ph.D., and Daria Bubnov, a junior researcher in the Department of Contemporary Art at the State Hermitage Museum.

El Lissitzky Designer (Self-portrait). 1924 Montage, gelatin silver print Collection Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands Source: hermitagemuseum.org

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog (in Russian and English), which includes introductory Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director General of the State Hermitage Museum, and Charles Esche. Authors - Boris Groys, art theorist, Dmitry Ozerkov, Olga Sviblova, director of the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow.

exhibition "Utopia and Reality. El Lissitzky, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, "was successfully held in the Van Abbe Museum, Netherlands (1 December 2012 - 28 April 2013). At the end of the exhibition in the Hermitage it will be shown in the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (16 September - 24 November 2013), in 2014 - at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Graz, Austria.

In 2004, the State Hermitage Museum, an exhibition of "Ilya and Emilia Kabakov:" Incident in the Museum "and other installations" from the collection of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, which became the first major exhibition of works by Kabakov in Russia, marking the return of the artists to their homeland after their departure abroad in 1988. The Hermitage collection are works of art submitted by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov to the museum (the installation "Red Wagon", "In the closet", "Toilet in the Corner", a collection of drawings and prints).

Source : hermitagemuseum.org