Alexander Matveyev and His School. Sculpture and Drawings.

The State Russian Museum for the first time presents works by the prominent sculptor and teacher Alexander Matveyev alongside with the works by his apprentices. Among them are Mikhail Anikushin and Mikhail Vainman, Boris Kaplyansky and Alexander Ignatyev, Leonid Eidlin and Alexei Timchenko, Lyubov Kholina and Alexander Chernitsky. The exposition includes 120 sculptures, 44 graphic works and 14 objects of decorative and applied art from the Russian Museum collection, which owns the most complete collection of works by Alexander Matveyev and a unique collection of works by his apprentices. The exhibition introduces almost all kinds of plastic art — portraits, figures, sketches for monuments, studies of a nude model. The exposition also includes drawings that have peculiarities, characteristic for an artist-sculptor. This exhibition is a unique opportunity to follow all the stages of the development of the plastic school and shows a whole epoch of the Soviet sculpture. The Matveyev school is more profound phenomenon than just a circle of apprentices. It implies a certain type of mind, its own plastic solution. Matveyev taught to understand plastic, peculiarities of the sculptural language and the attitude to sculpture as an art of vast philosophical generalization. The Matveyev school was founded in the 1920s, it is obvious from the first works of his students. They are among best samples of the Leningrad sculpture of the 1920s-30s that preserve classic traditions and the spirit of the epoch. The next generation of sculptors followed the traditions of the Matveyev school. Each of them has passed his own creative development, however, they are united by the common love to shape and material that they have got from their teacher. A catalogue for the exhibition has been published.