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Edward Bekkerman. Heaven

Edward Bekkerman. Angel of Peace. 2006. Mixed media on canvas. 63 x 12.5 in.
30 November 2017—12 February 2018

Edward Bekkerman was born in Sochi in 1958. He was originally trained as a dancer at the Bolshoi theater school, and, after his parents emigrated to America in 1974, at George Balanchine’s American School of Ballet. Later he studied at the New York Art Student League.

From the 1990s on, Bekkerman works as an artist. He focuses on spirits, dreams, and on the unseen universe all around us. This is a place populated by ephemeral angels and guardians; its gardens planted with spectral flowers that could have sprung up on Mars. This soil, symbolistic in its essence, nourishes Bekkerman’s form, which clearly demonstrates his interest in the European painting traditions of the postwar decades, the era of late modernism—the aggressive imagery of Art Brut, primarily Jean Dubuffet.

Bekkerman’s flowers are spellbinding, drawing the viewer “into themselves” in almost the literal sense of the word. These images combine optical, metaphorical, and psychoenergetic aspects. Bekkerman’s angels are the result of the artist’s attempt to find his own place within the diverse practice of representation of these heavenly creatures in modern art. They represent some very simple, traditional things, behind which, however, there are some very personal life experiences. Gauzy but tough, these beings are nothing like Raphael’s dimpled cherubs; rather, they are rendered in the art brut style merging the material and coloristic, and the ethereal and spiritual.

Edward Bekkerman’s work can be found in the permanent collection of the State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; Museum of Miniature Art in Amsterdam, Moscow MOMA, and in many prominent private and corporate collections worldwide.

Edward Bekkerman. Protector. 2005. Mixed media on canvas. 54 x 61.8 in Edward Bekkerman. Flower of Love. 2017. Mixed media on canvas. 51 x 43.3 in Edward Bekkerman. Contentment. 2008. Mixed media on canvas. 67 x 52.7 in Edward Bekkerman. It’s Me. 1999. Mixed media on canvas. 54.7 x 47.6 in

Exhibitions
Military Parades: Porcelain and Watercolour

Military Parades: Porcelain and Watercolour

15 December 2023—13 May 2024

The exhibition is dedicated to a hundred-year-old tradition of producing decorative “military plates” depicting imperial army uniforms. Besides plates, the exhibition includes drawings and lithographs that served as sources or preliminary studies for paintings by such famous artists of the “uniform” genre.

Stanislav Zhukovsky

Stanislav Zhukovsky

25 August 2023—23 October 2023

The name of Stanislav Zhukovsky (1875–1944) is inseparably connected with the flourishing of lyrical landscape in the Silver Age of Russian culture.

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Virtual tour of the museum complex. 2009 (Rus., Eng., Ger., Fin.)

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