Mikhail Shvartsman was the muralist, mystic and philosopher, teacher and founder of the well-known Moscow graphic design school. He belongs to masters of the XX century, whose creative oeuvre was the landmark on a way to a new art language. The artist’s creative oeuvre turns to complex philosophic and religious aspects of reality. His style and plastic language was formed at the end of the 1950s – in the 1960s. He gave the name to his artworks as “hieraturas”. His conception was called as “hieratism”. He created this term from the ancient Greek hieros that means “sacred”, “signed”.
After the avant-garde artists of the 1920s Shvartsman developed the mystical and religious tradition of Russian art, combined in his artworks the methods of cubism, surrealism and archaic and religious meanings. Combination of representative and abstract art corresponded with his inner vision and interpretation of reality.
The anthropoid “Faces” were in the basis of the artist’s composition of the 1960s. They are the relative and laconic portraits of mystic “messengers”, that “remember” about a Byzantine icon.
In the beginning of the 1970s the abstract “Hieraturas” were originated. Mainly the geometrical forms were in the basis of the “Hieraturas”. The artist’s works with hermetically sealed compositions reminded of the ancient totems or magical altars. At times they are supplied with mysterious characters. The artist was extremely exacting to their handicraft quality. His hieraturas are emphatically artificial.
Shvartsman displayed certain the first archeological forms that were the basis of his idea on a harmonious structure of the world. According to the ideas of Shvartsman, non-objective structures of the artworks, within of that there is their own hidden life of forms, exposed metamorphoses of the Universe life.
Home and Family. Images of Peaceful Life
16 december 2022—20 june 2023
The Russian Museum exhibition project Artists on War and Peace can be seen as a diptych comprised of two exhibitions: Images of Military Life in Russian Art of the 16th to 20th Centuries and Home and Family. Images of Peaceful Life. They explore two existential aspects of human life perceived as polar opposites. The first half of the diptych features scenes of everyday life during wartime, while the other focuses on the theme of the home and family as guardian of the moral values of the Russian people.
Images of Military Life in Russian Art from the 16th to the 20th Centuries
20 october 2022—9 may 2023
Images of Military Life is an extensive exhibition featuring icons, paintings, sculptures, and applied and decorative artworks from the 16th through 20th centuries, most of them extracted from the museum’s repositories. It continues the Russian Museum’s time-honoured tradition of offering the public, from time to time, a broader perspective on its treasures and the magnitude of its collections.
The collection of masterpieces, chosen by the Russian Museum will allow you to make a first impression of the collection of the Russian Museum.
Russian Museum - one of the world's largest museums and is perhaps the only country where such a full treasure of national culture are presented.
Virtual tour of the museum complex. 2009 (Rus., Eng., Ger., Fin.)
In the online shop of the Russian Museum presented a huge range of souvenirs, illustrated editions and multimedia disks.
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