ARKADY PETROV
The exhibition contains more than 70 paintings and sculptures of artist from the Russian Museum Collection, Moscow private collections and the artist’s collection. He created his art works for almost 40 years. The exhibition presents the artist’s oeuvre in retrospective development.
Arkady Petrov is correctly ranked among the artists of the 1970s. His art, as well as the art of the leading representatives of that generation, is metaphorical, mythological, allegorical, ironical and even sharp with regard to the reality. The main themes of Arkady Petrov’s art are: life and culture of Soviet province in the middle of the 20th century, life of “ordinary Soviet human” as a special case of “humble human”. The images of Petrov’s art absorbed everyday culture of after Stalin’s epoch, time of the artist’s childhood and adolescence, but they are created at the least two decades later. The proper pushing aside, analysis and adequate representation couldn’t emerge without this temporal distance. The artist re-examines stereotypes of Soviet society looking at them in the light of kitsch subjects, images of mass native culture – from painted aniline post-cards to portraits of Alla Pugacheva. Petrov transforms an impersonal aesthetics of kitsch in gallery of heart-felt human characters, naive and epic at the same time, in the unique for Russia historical period.
The works of artist are housed in the Museum Ludwig (Cologne, Germany), the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Soviet Nonconformist Art, Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey, the USA), National Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul, Southern Korea) and many Private Collections all over the world.
The Russian Museum is the first museum that acquired the artist’s canvases in the beginning of the 1980-s already, in the period of almost total prohibition on the showing of his art works, and it’s the first museum that demonstrates valuable museum retrospective of Arkady Petrov.
The exhibition was organized in collaboration with pop/off/art Gallery, Moscow.
The Light of Learning: Publishing and Educational Posters from the Collection of the Russian Museum
16 december 2020—30 march 2021
The exhibition features posters from the collection of the Russian Museum, relating to education in Russia in the first third of the twentieth century. The exposition includes about 120 works of agitation art of the widest thematic range - from narrow advertising in bookstores, publishing houses and libraries to large-scale propaganda of reading, getting knowledge and education.
Gifts to the Russian Museum from Artists and Collectors. Selected Works. 1898–2019
29 july—30 november 2020
To mark the 125th anniversary of the Russian Museum, such an exhibition will be shown in all of its palaces, bringing together items of different epochs and donors, including the imperial family (Alexander III, Nicholas II, Grand Dukes), famous patrons of the arts and many others. General sponsor of the exhibition - VTB Bank.
- 28 december 2020—10 may 2021 > Stroganov Palace The Leningrad Rock Club in Photographs. Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Its Opening
- 9 december 2020—31 march 2021 > St Michael’s Castle Alexander Benois. On the 150th Anniversary of the Artist’s Birth
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.
