Armed conflicts have accompanied humanity through hundreds and thousands of years of its history. Wars have destroyed and created empires, caused nations to rise, mix, and disappear. Although never desired or welcomed, war was nevertheless accepted as a customary part of historic existence – a jousting ground where nations and states fought it out to win themselves a better place under the sun. War generals and heroes were immortalised in monuments, and some were even canonised as saints.
In Russia, as everywhere else in Europe, paintings of battle scenes, historic events, genre scenes, sculpture, and applied artworks on military subjects were in most cases commissioned by the state. First the customers would have been the emperor and members of his court, and then in the Soviet Union the Ministry of Culture, the Artists’ Union, and the Art Fund. In Soviet times, pre-1917 battle scene paintings deemed to possess no exceptional aesthetic merits by the then-current standards were largely confined to history museums. Russian battle artwork among permanent exhibits in art museums was limited to pieces by outstanding masters such as Ivan Aivazovsky and Vasily Vereshchagin. Battle paintings by other notable artists of the academic or realistic persuasion (Grigory Gagarin, Pyotr Gruzinsky, Nikolai Dmitriev-Orenburgsky, Alexei Kivshenko, Ivan Kovshenkov, Alexander von Kotzebue, Nikolai Karazin and others) were usually relegated to back rooms. A similar selection process was practiced by the Russian Museum post-1917, as its collection continued to be augmented by battle pieces and historical paintings created by Soviet masters: Mikhail Avilov, Alexander Deineka, Gely Korzhev, Evsei Moiseyenko, Andrei Mylnikov, Vladimir Serov, Valentin Sidorov, Pavel Sokolov-Skalya and others.
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.
Anna Golubkina (1864–1927).160th Anniversary of the Artist's Birth
21 February—31 March 2024
28 January 2024 marks the 160th anniversary of Anna Golubkina’s birth, an outstanding Russian sculptor. The jubilee exhibition presents typical works of the sculptor from different years.
We Never Forget! On the 80th Anniversary of Complete Liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi Siege
27 January—7 April 2024
Unique in its scope and diversity of genres, the exhibition is dedicated to the heroic feat of Leningrad defenders and residents during the siege. The exhibition includes over 200 works of painting, graphic art and sculpture, mainly created in the besieged Leningrad and shown for the first time.
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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The State Russian Museum
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