Red Army Studio

February 21 - March 31, 2008

Another key event for the foundation was the opening of the exhibition Red Army Studio that took place on February 21, 2008. The exhibition was organized by the Interros Publishing Program in cooperation with the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation and the State Museum and Exhibition Center ROSIZO. The Foundation’s exhibition halls accommodated 55 works of art and 26 posters dedicated to the Red Army history. The exhibition combined the key works by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Konstantin Yuon, Alexander Deyneka, Pavel Korin, Mitrofan Grekov, Alexander Laktionov, Viktor Popkov, Gely Korzhev and little-known works by Soviet painters.

An essential part of the exhibit was dedicated to the half-forgotten representatives of the Socialist Realism movement of the 1930s – Peter Shokhmin, Ekaterina Zernova, Serafima Ryangina, etc. The paintings were created for the anniversary exhibitions of the Red Army in the 1920s and 1930s and had been kept for many years in the store-rooms of the USSR's Ministry of Culture or in line museums, without ever being shown to the public or attracting the attention of art experts. An example of such works is the key painting of the exhibition, Red Army Arts Studio created in 1928 by Serafima Ryangina. The Foundation halls presented also works by famous Soviet painters: Isaak Brodsky, Tatyana Yablonskaya, Evsey Moiseenko, and Mikhail Savitsky that are seldom exhibited now and broaden the current view on official Soviet Art. There were also several works by modern Moscow and Saint Petersburg painters in the exhibition: Vladimir Kuprianov, Sergey Bratkov, Olga and Alexander Florensky, Sergey Shutov, Georgy Guryanov, Vladimir Kustov, Nikolay Kozlov.

The exhibition was being held in the context of the cultural and educational project Red Army. 1918 - 1946, organized by the Interros Publishing Program and Ivan Polyakov Humanitarian Project. The main purpose of the project was to describe the role played by the Red Army in the cultural, political and social life of the country and to show its changing image in art.

The project was opened by the book Red Army. 1918 - 1946. The 400 page tome published in the series Russia. 20th Centurydescribes the history of the Red Army from its founding in 1918 until 1946 when it changed its name to the Soviet Army after the Second World War.

Exhibition participants: the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Central museum of Armed Forces, the Russian Museum, the National Centre for Contemporary Arts, the State Literature Museum, the Russian State Library, the State Museum and Exhibition Center ROSIZO, and the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation.

Exhibition curators: Zelfira Tregulova, Iosif Bakstein.
Exhibition architect: Yury Avvakumov.
Exhibition painter: Alyona Kirtsova.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•