Domestic and Wild. Animal painting in the Russian Art of the 18th-20th centuries from the collection of the State Russian Museum

The exhibition, devoted to the development of animalism in all branches of Russian fine arts of the 18^th-21^st centuries, displays almost 300 works from the collection of the Russian Museum created by sculptors, graphic artists, painters, medalists, masters of decorative, applied and folk art from the collection of the Russian Museum. The exhibition includes the works of pure animal genre as well as the items that, semantically, exceed its limits. Nevertheless, the image of the animal assumes a particular and important role in all of them. Art has always reflected mutual relations between man and nature. Since the very dawn of fine art, animals and birds have taken up a firm position in it. Long before the formation of animal painting as a genre, they "inhabited" scenes of everyday life, landscapes and still-lifes. Animals and birds, great and small, meek and fierce, domestic and wild, peacefully adjoin in the museum rooms. Depicted by professional artists and folk craftsmen, they coexist harmoniously in a common space, offering the opportunity to feel deeply the metamorphoses, achievements and discoveries of the animal genre. A catalogue for the exhibition has been published.