This city guards me
from 30 May 2013 to 4 November 2013
Chamber cityscapes of Leningrad created by artists - members of the Leningrad art association “Circle of Artists”.
Entrance from Angliyskaya Embankment, 44
The exhibition unites more than 100 paintings from the collection of the State Museum of the History of St Petersburg, Central Exhibition Hall Manezh, Anna Akhmatova Museum, collection of art gallery K-Gallery and private collections. These are the chamber cityscapes depicting Leningrad of the 1920-1940s. The authors of landscapes are artists, who were mostly part of the Leningrad art group “Circle of Artists”.
“Circle of Artists” (1926-1932) was created by the graduates of Higher Art and Technical Institute. Over the years, many famous artists were part of this circle: Alexander Vedernikov, Nikolay Yemalyanov, David Zagoskin, Boris Kaplyansky, Vasily Kuptsov, Gerta Nemenova, Vladimir Malagis, Vyacheslav Pakulin, Alexei Pakhomov, Alisa Poret, Alexei Pochtenny, Alexander Rusakov, Alexander Samokhvalov, Georgy Traugot and others. The artists of this union tried to find a new figurative language suitable for the major social changes that have occurred in post-revolutionary Russia. In many ways, it is the “Circle” members that formed the basis for the aesthetics of the new realism. The declaration of union stated a collective work in art.
In 1932 the “Circle of Artists” has been dissolved (after the Decree of the Central Committee of the VKP (b) “On Restructuring Literary-Artistic Organizations”). Most of its members entered the Leningrad Union of soviet artists formed in 1932. The former “Circle” members lived very different lives. Nikolay Yemelyanov died in Stalin's camps in the late 1930s . Vladimir Grinberg, David Zagoskin, Fedor Zaryanov, Nikolay Lapshin, Piotr Osolodkov died during the Great Patriotic War and the Siege of Leningrad. Other artists who survived the war and siege became famous masters, representing the Leningrad school of art of the XXth century. The exhibition at the Rumyantsev Mansion presents cityscapes – informal views of Leningrad: embankments of Moika River, Kryukov Canal, Griboyedova Canal in Kolomna, lanes with street markets and coal storages, the Staraya derevnya district and industrial Neva River with steamships, new districts with constructed houses, etc. These landscapes show familiar and unfamiliar corners of Leningrad of the 1920-1940s in different seasons and at different times of day.
