Pioneers of Russian painting at Nationalmuseum this autumn

This autumn’s major exhibition at Nationalmuseum, The Peredvizhniki – Pioneers of Russian Painting, opens on 29 September 2011. With around 100 pieces on loan from the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, this will be Sweden’s largest ever exhibition of works by this group of artists. The exhibition will focus on the 1870–1910 period and will feature realistic, socially critical paintings, landscapes, historical scenes, and portraits of contemporary artists, musicians and writers.

This is the first large-scale exhibition in Sweden of works by members of the Russian group known as the Peredvizhniki. The group was founded in 1870 in protest at the conservative attitudes ofRussia’s Imperial Academy of Art. Its members used realist techniques to portray contemporary Russian society and to highlight social and political injustices. They organized travelling exhibitions around the country to take art to the people. Since the late 19th century the Peredvizhniki have enjoyed huge popularity inRussia, but they remain little known abroad. Thanks to the generosity of the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, and the Russian Museum, St Petersburg, in providing works on loan, Nationalmuseum is able this autumn to present a comprehensive survey of the group’s art. The exhibition, focusing on the 1870–1910 period, will comprise three rooms and four cabinets featuring around 100 paintings and drawings on a variety of subjects.

The diversity of the group’s work will be apparent in the exhibition. The Peredvizhniki believed in producing socially engaged art focused on social injustice and tough living conditions. Artists such as Vladimir Makovsky, Ilya Repin and Nikolai Yaroshenko depicted secret political meetings, convicts and starving peasants. Exhibition highlights will include Ilya Repin’s famous Barge-haulers on the Volga, one of the best-known works in Russian art. However, members of the group were fascinated by Russia’s past as well. Also on show will be images inspired by folktales, depictions of religious traditions, and scenes from daily life in years gone by.

Several of the Peredvizhniki specialized in landscape painting intended to portray what was typically Russian. Images of Russia’s plains and forests came to symbolize the motherland and were influential in shaping national identity. At times, Russian landscape painting calls to mind the dreamy, melancholy landscapes painted by Scandinavian artists of the fin de siècle, so to a Swedish audience it seems familiar yet foreign.

Some members of the group moved in prominent intellectual circles. The exhibition will include portraits of several leading Russian composers and authors of the time, such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy.

The exhibition runs from 29 September 2011 to 22 January 2012.

Exhibition catalogue
A lavishly illustrated 270-page exhibition catalogue will be produced in Swedish and English versions, with articles by Per Hedström (Nationalmuseum), exhibition curator, Professor David Jackson (University of Leeds), exhibition co-curator, and experts from the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum. For text samples please contact Nationalmuseum’s press officers.

Further information
Per Hedström, exhibition curator, phm@nationalmuseum.se, +46 8 5195 4356
Hanna Tottmar, press officer, htr@nationalmuseum.se, +46 8 5195 4390
Anna Jansson, press officer, ajn@nationalmuseum.se, +46 8 5195 4391

Captions
Sergei Svetoslavsky, View from a Window of the Moscow School of Painting, 1878, State Tretyakov Gallery
Ilya Repin, Portrait of Baroness Varvara Iskul von Hildenbandt, 1889, State Tretyakov Gallery
Ilya Repin, Barge-haulers on the Volga, 1870-73, State Russian Museum

Special thanks to Anne-Marie and Herbert Lembcke for their active participation in the exhibition project. The exhibition has been made possible by their ideas, contacts and very generous financial contribution via the Ad Infinitum Foundation.