Ulitsa Volkonka 14
Tel. (495) 697 1546
Open: 10am- 7pm Tue- Sun
The Gallery of Art of the Countries of Europe and America of the 19th-20th centuries is an art gallery that presents works by Western European and American artists of the 19th-20th centuries, including collections of impressionists and post-impressionists from the collections of patrons Sergei Schukin and Ivan Morozov. The museum is located in the left wing of the Golitsyn estate in Znamensky Lane, which has been part of the Pushkin Museum (GMII) since the early 1980s. The opening of the gallery took place in 2006 as its branch.
Building
The gallery is located in an
outbuilding of the Golitsyn estate in Maly Znamensky Lane, built at
the end of the 18th century in the style of early classicism, it was
originally used as a utility room. In 1888-1892, the private school
of I. M. Khainovsky was located in the wing. From 1890 to 1892,
restoration work took place in the house under the guidance of
architect Vasily Zagorsky. As a result of the reconstruction, the
wing was reequipped for the delivery of living rooms and received
the name "Prince's Yard". Artists Vasily Surikov, Ilya Repin,
Alexander Skryabin, Boris Pasternak rented apartments in the
building.
After the outbuilding became part of the Pushkin
Museum in the early 1980s, it was reconstructed to house an art
gallery.
Museum
The art collection began to take shape in
the middle of the 19th century, when a fashion for collecting
paintings appeared among patrons and industrialists of Moscow. The
museum presents a collection of paintings by French impressionists
and post-impressionists from the collections of merchants Ivan
Morozov and Sergei Shchukin. Patrons began to acquire works by
artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when
impressionism was not very popular in Europe and the Russian Empire.
So, Ivan Morozov was fond of the works of Paul Cezanne, Maurice
Denis and Pierre Bonnard, and Sergei Shchukin became the patron of
Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, buying almost all new paintings by
masters. The collections of Ilya Ostroukhov, Sergei Polyakov and
Sergei Shcherbatov also played a major role in the formation of the
museum's collection of paintings of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries.
After the 1917 revolution, all private collections
were nationalized. Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov emigrated,
leaving their collections in Russia. Some time later, permanent
exhibitions were opened based on their collections. In 1918, the
First Museum of New Western Painting was founded in the former house
of Shchukin under the leadership of the art worker Yakov Tugendhold.
At the same time, the Second Museum of New Western Painting was
opened in the mansion of the merchant Morozov. Boris Ternovets
became its director.
In 1923, the Shchukin and Morozov
collections were merged and named the State Museum of New Western
Art (GMNZI). The general collection, numbering about 500 canvases,
was exhibited in the former house of Morozov at 21 Prechistenka. The
museum managed to achieve art exchanges, as a result of which works
by Italian, German, Belgian, Czechoslovak and Polish masters
appeared in the collection.
In the post-war USSR, the fight
against formalism began, so in 1948 the Museum of New Western Art
was closed, and the collection was distributed between the Pushkin
State Museum and the Hermitage. In the 1980s, the wing moved to the
Pushkin Museum, which in the 1990s received paintings by other
contemporary artists Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall. The museum
decided to use the building to display this collection.
On
the opening day of the gallery in 2006, the director of the Pushkin
Museum, Irina Antonova, expressed the idea of recreating the Museum
of New Western Art by combining the Moscow and St. Petersburg
collections. However, the head of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky,
refused to hand over the canvases.
"The revival of this
museum is not a problem of Antonova and Piotrovsky, and not even a
problem of the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage. It is ridiculous to
understand the issue in this way. This is a state problem. The state
destroyed the museum. The state has the opportunity to restore it.
This is my point of view."
Irina Antonova.
The collection
of paintings is located in 26 chamber halls. As of 2018, the museum
collection includes works by Gustave Courbet, Paul Helleu, Camille
Pizarro, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Toulouse Lautrec, Pierre Cecile Puvis
de Chavannes, Jean-Francois Millet, Honoré Daumier, Narcissus Diaz,
Louis-Gabriel-Eugène Isabey , Francisco Goya, Eugene Delacroix, Jean
Auguste Dominique Ingres, Paul Delaroche. In a separate room, the
German school of painting of the 19th century is exhibited, where
the works of Kaspal Friedrich and the artists of the "Nazarenes" are
presented. Also, a separate exposition is dedicated to Claude Monet,
Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse.
Subway: Kropotkinskaya