March 01, 2008

Preserving 1000 Years of Russian Art

St. Petersburg’s Russian Museum turns 110 this year. Home to the world’s largest collection of Russian art, it opened its doors on March 7, 1898.

“I think often and seriously about needing to open a museum of Russian art in St. Petersburg,” Tsar Alexander III reportedly once said to his art advisor, Alexei Bogolyubov. “Moscow, for instance,” he continued, “has the fine Tretyakov Gallery that I heard [Pavel Tretyakov] bequeathed to the city. And we’ve got nothing.”

The idea of such a museum coincided with Alexander III’s aspiration to celebrate Russian nationhood, for a patriotism expressed through the arts. Yet it fell to his son, Nicholas II, to bring the dream to fruition.

The site chosen for the museum was Mikhailovsky Palace, also known as Engineer’s Palace. Originally built for Tsar Paul’s son Mikhail between 1819 and 1825, it is a graceful, Classical style building designed by Karl Rossi, perched just two blocks from Nevsky Prospekt.

The museum’s initial collection of paintings, sculptures and applied art comprised some 1,500 works; there were an additional 5,000 pieces in a collection of Christian antiquities. Many of the paintings were from the Hermitage, which donated nearly the entirety of its collection of Russian art, including such masterpieces as Karl Bryullov’s The Last Day of Pompei, Fidelio Bruni’s The Brazen Serpent, Ivan Aivazovsky’s The Ninth Wave, Vladimir Borovikovsky’s Portrait of Murtaza Kuli Khan, and Alexander Ivanov’s Christ’s Appearance to St. Mary Magdalene.

The museum also received a great deal of art from the Museum of the Academy of Arts, from the private collection of Prince Alexei Lobanov-Rostovsky (acquired by Nicholas II and donated to the museum), from the collections of Princess Maria Tenishev and from Tsar Alexander III’s personal collection at Tsarskoye Selo.

Today, the museum has over 400,000 pieces of art, including oil paintings, icons, sculptures, graphic art, decorative and applied art, and coins. The collection is unique, said Director Vladimir Gusev, “because it contains exhibits encompassing 1000 years of Russian culture, in all genres.”

“You know,” Gusev said, “for a long time, there was the opinion that Russian fine art was secondary to Western European art. They said Russian artists were constantly a step behind their European colleagues. Yet this is not so. Russian art began with a powerful icon painting school. Many Russian artists learned first from icon painters and only later from their Western colleagues, whom Tsar Peter the Great invited to Russia. By the 19th century, Russia had its own art painting school, and the Russian avant-garde made no small impact on world art.”

Art and History

Less than 20 years after its founding, the Russian Museum faced the upheaval of the Bolshevik Revolution, which unfolded just outside its doors, followed by years of bloody civil war.

Interestingly, the turmoil of those years (which Gusev said did not threaten the museum’s collections) was accompanied by an unprecedented era of artistic experimentation. The Russian avant-garde led the way in Europe’s exploration of new forms and styles of artistic expression.

Accordingly, in 1926, the museum opened a Department of Modern Art, embracing new movements and acquiring canvases directly from artists. At that time, the museum inherited over 300 canvases from the Institute of Art Culture – works by Wassily Kandinsky, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Pavel Filonov and Marc Chagall. Also dating from this era are the museum’s over 100 paintings and 20 drawings by Kazimir Malevich – the largest single collection of his work in the world. The museum also “benefitted” from the Bolshevik state’s rampant nationalization of private art collections.

Indeed, the museum’s collections grew rapidly during this era, spurred by “acquisitions” from imperial palaces and “donations” from collectors who were forced into emigration or exile, and who realized that only a state-owned museum could safeguard their collections for future generations.

In 1932, the era of artistic experimentation was brought to a screeching halt with Joseph Stalin’s creation of the Union of Artists (and the liquidation of all independent artistic groups). Socialist Realism became the only acceptable form of artistic expression, and the museum’s holdings reflect the output of that era, including countless paeans to Stalin.

During the Great Patriotic War (WWII), the Russian Museum endured the Nazi blockade and countless aerial bombardments. The most valuable pieces in the museum’s collection had been evacuated to the East, but not everything could be taken away in time, so many works were hidden in the museum’s cellars.

A few heroic employees stayed behind in the blockade, protecting and monitoring the collection, putting out fires. More than 40 artillery shells and 100 incendiary bombs exploded on museum territory, four 400-500 kg bombs landed near the museum itself. Explosions damaged the building’s foundation, blew out windows and destroyed canal levies.

And yet, even during the war, the museum’s collections expanded. Works of art discovered in destroyed or abandoned buildings were brought into the reliable shelter of the museum.

Six months after Victory Day, on October 14, 1945, a train carrying the museum’s treasures arrived in the city. On May 9, 1946, the museum reopened its doors to the public.

An important figure in the museum’s post-Stalin era was Vasily Pushkaryov, director of Russian Museum from 1951 to 1977. He saved thousands of valuable works of art by forbidden and avant-garde artists by hiding the works in the museum’s cellars, far from the eyes of censors and bureaucrats. Reportedly, Pushkaryov even successfully deflected an order by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnyev to give a Malevich painting to an American businessman as a gift from the Soviet government.

Pushkaryov assiduously worked to add to the museum’s holdings and traveled through Europe, charming paintings and donations from emigre artists, slipping through French customs with works by Alexander Benois and Leon Bakst. During his tenure, Pushkaryov (who went on to other museum duties in Moscow) added 120,000 prominent works of art to the museum’s collection, or over a quarter of its present holdings.

Today, one million visitors pass through the State Russian Museum each year; a third of these are foreign tourists. But, said Director Gusev, this is but a quarter of the number of visitors the museum could accommodate.

Meanwhile, the museum is growing. Over the last decade, it has been given three more palaces to turn into exhibition halls: the Stroganoff Palace (built in 1753 by Rastrelli), the Marble Palace (built in the late 1700s by Rinaldi, as a present from Catherine the Great to Count Orlov), and the St. Michael’s Engineer’s Castle (an austere structure built for Tsar Paul I, where he was also murdered). But all three buildings must be reconstructed.

Valentina Petrova, 54, first came to the Russian Museum with her parents, when she was five. Awestruck by the huge, colorful canvases, she has returned often.

“Ever since my first visit, I always had a special feeling about this place,” Petrova said, standing in front of Aivazovsky’s Ninth Wave. “I’d say it was a mixture of joy and pride for the talents that our country has. I was always especially delighted by the canvases of Karl Bryullov and Ivan Aivazovsky.”

Today Perova brings her eight-year old grandson, Sasha, to the museum.

“I just can’t imagine St. Petersburg or Russia without it,” she said.