Ancient Myth and the Modern World

Ancient mythology has had a huge influence on the culture of humanity, equipping the arts with numerous stories that can be used to draw historical, artistic, aesthetic and moral parallels. Just about every artist who embarks on a quest for harmony of shape and of the senses takes inspiration from the ancient Greek tales. In the 1980s and 1990s, entire series of works on the themes of antiquity appeared in the art of both master artists of the older generation and of younger artists who did not acknowledge any thematic or stylistic limitations. The painters and sculptors whose work can be found in this exhibition have employed the language of contemporary art to convey archetypal notions, casting their gaze into the distant pre-Christian past in search of meaningful correlations with modernity.

The exhibition includes around 70 paintings and sculptures from the mid-20th century to the early 21st, taken from the Russian Museum collection and from artists’ studios in Moscow and St Petersburg.