MARIA DILLON

The exhibition of art works by Maria Dillon (1858-1932) is devoted to the 150th anniversary of this sculptor. The exposition includes the almost unknown works from the collections of the Russian Museum, the most interesting exhibits from the State Museum of Urban Sculpture and also the works from the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery; Museum of Literature of Pushkinsky Dom (Pushkin House) and the Gornyi museum of the Saint-Petersburg State Gornyi Institute. Alongside with sculpture works there are presented the graphic works by Dillon and the photos of her memorial sculptures and monuments.
The creative oeuvre of Maria Dillon reflected the variety of tendencies existed in Russian sculpture on the boarder of the XIX and the XX century. The secret of success of her works was not only in the ability to satisfy the requirements of the viewers, but also in the giftedness, in high professionalism, in the undoubted honesty in the attitude for her work. Even in the first portraits created in the second half of the 1880's were remarkable for the mastery of execution and the fineness of evocative delineation. In the 1890's she turned to the depiction of children and to the plastic theme of the naked woman body ("Andromeda chained to the rock", "Tenderness"). But the leading place in her art on the boarder of the centuries belongs to the portrait, monumental and decorative and memorial sculpture. Together with using of methods of salon art of the late academism one can notice the master's close attention to the discoveries of the Modern style. The most significant sculptor's works of the 1890-1910's are the tombs of V. F. Komissargevskaya, A. S. Arensky, N. S. Arutinov and L. O. Premazzi, and also the Lobachevsky monument in Kazan. The Maria Dillon's work in the memorial genre was closely connected with the creation of portraits, where she had achieved the particular reliability in the rendering of the external and spiritual outlook of the model.