Broadened Perception. 150th anniversary of Mikhail Matyushin's birth

The exhibition, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Mikhail Matyushin’s birth, presents some 60 artworks from the collection of State Museum of the History of St Petersburg by this outstanding artist, musician, art theorist, teacher and publisher.

In the 1920s Mikhail Matyushin (1861–1934) developed his own theory of broadened perception of the colour and the space, which became the basis for the “organic art”, one of the styles of the Russian avant-garde movement. Together with his disciples in the Academy of Arts, and then in the Institute of Artistic Culture, Matyushin tried to prove that people don’t use all of their physiological abilities, and they can broaden the perception of the world around them. He claimed that the artist should not only depict the fragments of the reality, but render all the fullness and the infinity of the space, the coherent whole of the objects and the surrounding without any unnecessary details.

The exhibition includes drawings by Mikhail Matyushin, created in1920–1930s as illustrations to his theory of art: “Haystack in the Broad Landscape” (1922), “Pine Tree in the Broad Observation, Adhesion to the Space” (1924–1925). Pencil sketches and studies by Mikhail Matyushin give an idea of the artist’s perception of the nature and the people. In the early 1930s Matyushin and his disciples took part in the decoration of the city during the holidays, and the posters he designed reflect the transformation of his creative search in the end of his life. Most of the artworks, presented on the exhibition, have never been displayed before.