Director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism Yulia Petrova: “A modern museum is a museum that is easy to communicate with. Yulia Petrova: Russian impressionism is not yet a well-established term Yulia, what is the mood of your museum? Can you say a few words or give

An exhibition of the Boris Mints collection has opened in Venice, and the Museum of Russian Impressionism in Moscow is due to appear by the end of the year. Mysterious Russian impressionism will attract the public, the collector is sure

Boris Mints
Entrepreneur, collector
1958 was born in the family of a military engineer

1980 Graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Ivanovsky state university. PhD

1980s work at the Department of Higher Mathematics of the Ivanovo Textile Academy and in one of the NTTM centers

1990s Vice Mayor of Ivanovo, Head of the Main Department of the State Property Committee, Head of the Presidential Department for Local Self-Government

2000s creates the Union of Right Forces party, heads the Otkritie financial corporation and the REN TV media holding

Now Chairman of the Board of Directors of the investment holding O1 Group. Acting State Councilor I class. Engaged in charitable and social activities

When they first started talking about your museum, I came across the following explanation: there is a museum collection, and there is your own collection, that is, the collection of the Museum of Russian Impressionism is one thing, and your personal one is another. There was another explanation: that the museum's collection is part of your personal collection. So what is the principle?

I collect not only Russian impressionism. For example, I really like Alexander Benois . I buy any good Benoit; I probably have 40 works. I love it very much Boris Kustodiev. Yes, I love many! Valentina Serova, for example (but it is very hard to buy), Igor Grabar. From today's Valeria Koshlyakova, I consider it outstanding artist modernity. And I even show some of his works in connection with impressionism. Of course, this is not impressionism, but they were written under its influence.

A modern Art besides Koshlyakov?

There are many things: and Ilya Kabakov, and what not. But it does not mean that everything should be given to the museum. In addition, not all works are museum-level. Therefore, from the works that I had, art critics selected five or six dozen of those that, in their opinion, meet such criteria. And when it was decided that there should be a museum, I began to invest in its creation. Therefore, now I mostly buy Russian impressionism. I used to buy everything I liked in general - now I do it less often. Just because the resources are not unlimited, and, I must say, the work becomes more expensive every day.

How many things will be in the permanent museum exhibition?

I think the permanent exhibition should be small, about 50-70 paintings. This may not apply to professionals, but in general, a modern person cannot stay in a museum for more than two hours in principle. And Western exhibitions are arranged in such a way that a person spends in enclosed space maximum two hours. Just because people don't like it anymore, you know? Once in my youth, when I had a lot of free time, when I arrived in Leningrad, I spent whole days walking around the Russian Museum and the Hermitage. But this is not typical behavior for ordinary person- spend the whole day, especially the weekend, in the museum. On weekends, people mostly want to sleep longer.

Julia Petrova
Director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism

The building, which was allocated to the Museum of Russian Impressionism on the territory of the Bolshevik Cultural and Business Complex, in former factory times was a storehouse of flour and powdered milk. This particular building has no historical value, it is late, so we had the opportunity to completely re-equip it. We set ourselves the task of museum building as convenient as possible for organizing expositions and other events: it is thought out not only to maintain temperature and humidity conditions, but also competent safe storage, an entrance group, a loading and unloading area for cars that will bring exhibits to exhibitions, special elevators. The reconstruction project was prepared by the London Bureau John McAslan + partners. In addition, on the advice of the architect, we engaged well-known museum consultants Lord Cultural Resources: they supported us on initial stage, helped to draw up an action plan, brought up to date, warned about a number of nuances. Reconstruction work began in 2012 and we expect to complete it this autumn.

Factory "Bolshevik" is not to say that a prayerful place. Not very famous.

It is still unknown. Let's do it and it will be known. "Garage" was also once unknown. Fame is such a thing... And Bolshevik is a very comfortable place. Close to the center, but not in the very center. Accordingly, we have solved all the problems of parking, moreover, the museum is not far from the metro, so that in this sense all categories of our visitors will be satisfied. If we do a good product then the place will become popular. In Saratov, when we showed a picture of Kustodiev Venice, 6 thousand people came in ten days, it was so interesting and unusual. Imagine a provincial library with 600 visitors every day! The day before the closing of the exhibition, even the governor stopped by to see it - because everyone is talking about it.

Our serious advantage is that from the very beginning we have been creating an absolutely modern museum. It can be said that there is no such space that meets all the requirements of the museum business in the country. It's trouble Russian museums. For example, the Hermitage has a wonderful collection, fantastically professional people, but the premises themselves? To make a normal modern museum, palaces need to be rebuilt, and it is forbidden to rebuild architectural monuments. And the Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin, and other museums, whose buildings were built in the last century before last, it is very difficult to modernize. In Europe it's different. For example, the building of the main museum of impressionism, Orsay in Paris, was rebuilt especially for him from the former railway station. We, thanks to our consultants and architects, managed to make an optimal project. I know collectors (I don't want to name names) who almost never give their work to exhibitions for one simple reason: the space is wrong. They feel sorry for the work, which will be incomprehensible in what temperature regime.

Following. We are doing a serious multimedia project, which, I think, will be of interest to young people. It is already close to completion, technically everything is ready. It seems to me that this is important in itself, because no one has ever presented a work of art in this form in Russia before. A picture is taken, photographed in a special way, and thanks to this, the viewer observes how it was painted, how it turned into what it became. All this can be seen on the Internet, and through social networks to be aware of all our news.

The first permanent exhibition will be built chronologically and will include both textbook names ( Konstantin Korovin, Valentin Serov, Igor Grabar), as well as authors well known to specialists and much less to the general public ( Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky, Sergey Vinogradov, Nikolai Dubovskoy). We will start from Vasily Polenov and his closest students, consider representatives of the circle of the Union of Russian Artists and the early impressionistic experiences of the avant-garde artists ( Mikhail Larionov, Vladimir Baranov-Rossine), let's move on to the post-revolutionary period: here we can talk about "quiet", non-exhibition impressionism ( Yuri Pimenov and such forgotten authors as Valentina Diffine-Christie), and even about the impressionistic works of the pillars of socialist realism. So, we'll show you the Parisian view Alexandra Gerasimova who arrived in France in 1934 and there remembered what Konstantin Korovin taught him.

I am talking about the first permanent exhibition, because, in our opinion, everything needs to be changed from time to time: to hang other things, of course, leaving the key works.

For temporary exhibitions we will have two halls, large and small. There are already a number of agreements with regional museums on joint projects. The low level of development of domestic tourism in our country leads to the fact that magnificent regional collections are practically unknown to Muscovites.

Explain the logic of events. Russian impressionism is just an excuse for such a public space as a museum, but would a museum have arisen anyway? Or public space Is this a consequence of the fact that you began to specialize in Russian impressionism?

When I started collecting, I did not even imagine that someday I would create a museum.

In general, what is more in this story - planned or random?

There are two different stories. The story of my collecting is like, poetically speaking, a secret desire. To collect, you first need to earn some money, as you know. And only when the desire coincided with the possibilities, real, meaningful collecting began. But in the process, of course, views always change. At some point, it became clear to me that there is little studied and little represented, not in the focus of art criticism, Russian impressionism - absolutely, from my point of view, underestimated. No one collected these things just like Russian impressionism. Like a direction in history domestic art it is practically unmarked.

What was the reason for the opening of the topic “Russian impressionism”? With some specific purchase? Or a pure idea?

No, I didn’t dream about it ready-made, like a table Mendeleev. It's just that I began to read more about Russian painting, and when I was in Paris, I went to museums. There are many museums there, not as famous as the Orsay, but with collections from about the same time, only smaller. They also have Claude Monet, and other great names; there are less well-known ones, although the quality of their painting, it seems to me, is not worse at all. (As PR people joke: what is the difference between a mouse and a hamster? PR, and nothing more.) And when I already had a dozen or two works on the topic and I went deeper into it, I thought that it would be right to raise it on this very level. And the course of events confirms that I was right. When we were preparing an exhibition for Venice, for the Palazzo Franchetti, a professor from the Milan Academy of Arts came and said that we had collected absolutely brilliant works. And this is the opinion of a representative of one of the most prominent in Europe educational institutions in the field of arts.

Valentin Serov. "Window". 1887

How did your collecting start?

Mostly from graphics - Benois, World of Art. I bought a lot of contemporary Moscow artists: I just wanted to revive the house, well, I didn’t have much money. I was an official in the 1990s, and it seemed to me that it was not very correct for an official to engage in collecting. Then, when I first went into management, then into business, it got better both with money and with time ... And I have been looking at pictures all my life. I have a huge library, I constantly go to museums, to collectors, to dealers who help in collecting.

Does it take a lot of time?

OK. Auctions for which we are preparing - big job: you need to look at everything, choose, go to see it live ... Not only in London, but also in Moscow. We have some very good auctions, and they have some very good teams that collect decent things. In Moscow, we bought a lot of things.

Do you buy mostly at auctions?

Yes. Approximately half are works that were taken out of the country many years ago, and sometimes they never even visited Russia. The same Venetian Kustodiev: there is no doubt that it was he, a well-known work, but fell out of sight. When the painting was brought to St. Petersburg, specialists from the Russian Museum came up and asked: “Listen, where did you get it? We thought she was gone."

09.03.2018

We met Yulia Petrova, director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism, a week after the opening of the Wives exhibition dedicated to the companions of famous Russian artists. Morning weekday- and there are already a lot of visitors, you won’t immediately approach other exhibits. The topic is certainly intriguing - how much do we know about the personal lives of geniuses? About who these women were, how their fates developed, as well as about amazing twists and turns. own destiny Yulia Petrova told MY WAY.

Full halls, excursions one after another. How can such success be explained? The fact that the details of the lives of famous people are revealed?
I think it's more likely that we have collected the first names of Russian art at this exhibition. Ilya Repin, Valentin Serov, Boris Kustodiev, Mikhail Nesterov, Igor Grabar, Nikolai Feshin, Alexander Deineka, Pyotr Konchalovsky... I see that the works of those authors whose names are on everyone's lips attract more attention. Therefore, it seems to me that the connection in the same namespace, which we used to be proud of, is more of interest. Of course, people are also interested in the stories of fate, and we answer these questions on excursions. But we - Art Museum and first of all we are talking about painting.

It's clear. Nevertheless, from the legacy of these wonderful artists, you chose not landscapes or still lifes, but portraits of their wives.
It does not seem to me that here we are straying into some kind of tabloid "yellowness". On the contrary, what we are talking about these women, in my opinion, adds information to the image of the artist. I would like each famous surname the image of a person would arise, about whom it would be interesting to learn more, to read when he came home, or to tell his parents, children, friends.

The exhibition covers the period from the last quarter of the 19th to the first half of the 20th century. But not all of the works fall into the field of Russian impressionism.
We did not set such a task. From the very beginning, Boris Iosifovich Mints, the founder of the museum, and I agreed that only the permanent exhibition would be devoted to Russian impressionism, and temporary exhibitions had the right not to relate to either impressionism or Russian art. On the other hand, it is most interesting for us to work with this period, since the development of Russian impressionism belongs to it. Through the prism of the portrait of his wife, we are talking about Russian art of this period, and about the evolution female image. Chronologically, the first portrait at this exhibition is dated 1880, he came to us from Simferopol. This is the work of Nikolai Matveev, very gentle, of an academic nature, signed simply - "Portrait of a Wife." We don't know anything about this woman, not even her name. But almost 140 years have passed, and viewers, sociologists, and art historians have become interested in who these women are. What can be said about them? Did they help these masters or influence them destructively? Indeed, one has to tell personal stories, sometimes tragic, sometimes quite funny. Behind every work is destiny.

That is, they are very rarely exhibited?
Everything we show here is rarely seen by the public. These are things from 15 museums and 17 private collections. And here, you know, there is another question that the general public sees less often - work from private collections, for example, Roman Babichev or Petr Aven, or work from the museum of Saransk, Simferopol or Petrozavodsk. Unfortunately, even such brilliant museums as Ufimsky or Kazansky are rarely visited by Muscovites. Returning to the question of history. Of course, Natalya Borisovna Nordman-Severova, Repin's wife, always deserves a separate discussion. All her life she shocked those around her. She came from a noble family, not rich, but quite noticeable - her godfather was Alexander II. In her youth, she fled to the United States to work on a farm there, returning to Russia a year later. The conversations behind her back were mostly judgmental. When for the first time she was brought to visit Repin, Ilya Efimovich asked "not to bring this one into the house anymore."

Even so?
Yes. Nevertheless, Natalya Borisovna became the wife of Ilya Efimovich. She was a suffragist, a feminist, trying to emancipate the servants. It is widely known that in Repin's estate in Penaty, the servants were seated at the table with the gentlemen. Natalya Borisovna prepared vegetarian meals for her husband, hay cutlets. Repin, however, recalled that "in the evening, Natasha goes down into the glacier and eats ham."

Maybe he was being ironic or fantasizing?
Maybe. But he loved her very much. They said that he "does not leave his Nordmansha a single step." And even those who condemned Natalya Borisovna for her radical views, in particular Korney Chukovsky, admitted that she was very supportive of Ilya Efimovich and was doing everything possible for him. We have picturesque and sculptural portraits of Natalya Borisovna on display. Repin created only a few sculptural portraits, this one is one of them. separate story at the portrait by Igor Grabar, also from a private collection. It depicts two young women, Meshcherina's sisters, nieces of entrepreneur Nikolai Meshcherin, owner of the Danilov Manufactory. Igor Grabar often visited them in Dugino - Meshcherin kept workshops for artists in his estate. Over time, one of the nieces, Valentina, became Grabar's wife. They gave birth to two children, but, unfortunately, Valentina fell ill, spent several years in the clinic and eventually left home. Her sister Maria, who then became the second wife of the artist, took care of the children. The portrait that we have presented was painted in 1914, when Grabar had just married Valentina. Of course, no one could then imagine that life would turn out like this.

How do portraits of wives differ from images of other "models"?
First of all, this is an image of a person, the closest, the most understandable to the artist. A self-portrait and a portrait of his wife are, in general, kindred things. The portrait of the wife is not written to order. Accordingly, you can spend a different amount of time on it. For example, Robert Falk painted a portrait of his wife Angelina Shchekin-Krotova for two years. Sometimes from the guests of our museum I hear comments in the spirit that "the wives are not at all beautiful." But in most cases talented artist writes an image, not photographic specifics. A portrait is always a combination of physical traits and inner charm, to which the artist, working with a model, is undoubtedly subject.

Do you have any favorite work?
Certainly. But I'm having a hard time picking one. There are portraits that I really like from an artistic point of view. I have already mentioned Boris Grigoriev and Nikolai Feshin. A beautiful portrait - painted by Konchalovsky in 1919. In general, in my opinion, the 1910s are the most interesting in his legacy. The wife of Pyotr Petrovich was the daughter of Vasily Surikov. wonderful story associated with a portrait by Petrov-Vodkin. Creating this portrait, the artist proposed to his beloved. She was embarrassed, said: “I don’t know,” ran into the garden. But the wedding took place, and they lived a long happy life. The wife of Kuzma Sergeevich, the Frenchwoman Marie, became an art historian and researcher and wrote memoirs, which she entitled "My Great Russian Husband."

Were there painters among the wives of artists?
Certainly. Elizaveta Potekhina studied with Robert Falk and became his first wife. Elizaveta von Brashe, wife of Boris Grigoriev, graduated from the Stroganov School with a gold medal - but who has seen her work? For most of these women, marriage put an end to their personal lives. creative destiny. Varvara Stepanova can be considered an exception - her portrait by Alexander Rodchenko is also at our exhibition. As a rare example of a woman who, next to her artist husband, created her own bright career, let's name Nadezhda Nadezhdina, the founder of the ensemble "Birch". Her husband was Vladimir Lebedev, a painter, graphic artist, a very subtle artist. It is clear that the figure of Margarita Konenkova raises a lot of questions. It is now known that she was a Soviet intelligence officer. And precisely because she carried out special tasks, the Konenkovs spent 20 years in the States, and, returning from there, they were not subjected to any repression, on the contrary, they received an apartment and a workshop on Tverskoy Boulevard.

I can’t help but ask - what about you, as the director of the museum, hwatime for both work and family?
Of course, you can’t embrace the immensity, you will always feel like you haven’t had time in one or another part of your life. But I know that my forte- time management. Even without knowing such a word, in middle school I learned to plan and follow planned schedules, never be late. I'm sure it helps me stay in rhythm. In addition, my husband is a stone wall.

How did you choose your profession in general? Are you from a family of art historians?
No. My parents are engineers. I studied at a very good school in St. Petersburg, we had a course in art history - the teacher Galina Petrovna Zhirkova told so interestingly that I caught fire. Then I entered the university in St. Petersburg, studied in parallel at two faculties - history and philology. She studied French symbolism and eventually defended a dissertation on this topic - about an artist named Eugene Carrière. She started working after the 10th grade - she gave French lessons, did translations, editorial work. Thanks to those who believed in me when, at the age of seventeen, I came to them and claimed that I could do anything. I also try to support the youth who come to our museum.

How did you get into the museum yourself?
I met Mr. Mintz when I worked at the Leonid Shishkin Antique Gallery in Moscow. Boris Iosifovich was one of our clients. When I left the gallery and told Mr. Mints that I was leaving, he offered me to become his consultant. Well, later a short time he had the idea to open a museum – and for more than six years we have been doing this project.

You are so young and already the director of the museum - what goals do you set for yourself?
Apart from career development there is professional growth. I would like the exhibitions we hold here to be successful. So that people come to them with pleasure and leave inspired. So that Muscovites, thinking about how they will spend the weekend, look - what is there in the Museum of Russian Impressionism? I think that after 40 I will do my doctoral dissertation. Well, like any woman, I would like more children (now I have only one daughter). And I would like my family to be happy.

Interviews with businessmen, artists, travelers and others famous personalities you can find in .

Text: Ludmila Burkina

— Boris Iosifovich, how did your history of collecting art begin?

- There is no single point of reference, I always bought inexpensive paintings that I liked, was interested in, read. You know, a house and an apartment even live in a completely different way when there is painting in them. When I come to St. Petersburg, I definitely go to the Russian Museum or the Hermitage. But in the nineties, when I still served as an official and was not a poor person, I still believed that it was not the time to engage in collecting. Therefore, a more serious hobby began about sixteen years ago, when I had already returned to business.

— When did you focus specifically on the theme of Russian impressionism?

- Once I met the famous collector Leonid Stepanovich Shishkin, a certain social circle was formed, I began to devote more time to my hobby, to think about what could be collected. And then he encountered the Russian style of impressionistic writing. At some point, I realized that Russian artists were able to do absolutely fantastic impressionistic works, and I began to look for literature on the topic. Unfortunately, I found only one American book, but it, in my opinion, was highly politicized and unfair, and talked about the Soviet period of impressionism.

— Don't you think that Russian impressionism as a whole is underestimated in the world?

“I am absolutely convinced of this. Almost no one knows about him. There is not even a concept of Russian impressionism. Last spring, for example, we showed our exhibition in Venice in partnership with the Russian-Italian cultural center. He cooperates with the University of Venice, whose specialists are considered among the best in the world in the field of art history. Silvia Burini and Giuseppe Barbieri, the curators who worked with us on the exposition, said that all the textbooks that we published should be reviewed. Because they have the Russian icon, there is the avant-garde of Malevich and Kandinsky, there is social realism and that's it.

In general, we became one of the first who systematically approached Russian impressionism. When the curators came to me, I was very worried. I thought they would come now, look at the pictures and say: “My God! They have collected some nonsense, and they want to make an exhibition! These Russians are absolutely mad.” But when we opened the exhibition, all of Italy and half of Europe gathered, the huge hall was full!

Justice is the most important thing in life.

— Did you have a tradition of collecting in your family?

- No. In my family, unfortunately or fortunately, a lot starts with me. I did not see any of my grandfathers, both died in the war. But on the mother's side there were people close to art. Younger sister my grandmother played in the Meyerhold Theater, but she was taken away. I didn’t ask my grandmother at the time, and my mother was only four years old when this happened. She, of course, did not remember anything from what had previously been in their house.

— How long have you nurtured the idea of ​​opening a museum of Russian impressionism?

— I have two properties. The first is a kind of passionarity, I always want to do something. And the second is justice. In general, I believe that justice is the most important thing in life. At some point, I internally came to the conclusion that the world is unfair to the wonderful Russian artists: they created so many masterpieces, and no one sees them. There are two ways to fix this. The first is to open a gallery, but that involves selling. I buy and sell a lot of things in my life, but not paintings. I have never sold a single painting in my life. I tried once, but, fortunately, the picture did not go away. I brought her home, looked at her and asked myself: "And why did I think of selling it?". I realized that the gallery was not interesting to me. But the museum… There are few museums in Moscow. And now there is an opportunity to do private. And I thought it was good beautiful story. In addition, I had an excellent specialist - Yulia Petrova, who helped to collect the collection. Always near needed knowledgeable person. In business, this is called an "entrepreneur." The one who will do this, as they say, full time.

Museum of Russian Impressionism

— Yulia Petrova became the director of the museum?

- Yes. I did several exhibitions with her, and I liked our experience. I generally like young, educated people who know more than me. At the same time, I am wary of art critics, because many of them “brilliant intellect, but do not shine,” as La Rochefoucauld said. They usually pronounce some words that are simple Soviet people hard to understand.

— How did you choose the location for the future museum?

— To make a museum, you need to choose the right place. We couldn't find it for a very long time. You know, there is such a wonderful developer Sergey Gordeev. He built the Stanislavsky Factory business center ( V tsarist Russia the Alekseevs' gold-weaving factory was located here - ed. ed.). And there is located "Studio theatrical art» Sergei Zhenovach. It turned out to be a magnificent complex. The idea of ​​an office center with a cultural object seems to me very correct. Therefore, when we bought the Bolshevik factory, I arrived there, looked and immediately understood that this was the place where the museum should be built. Then we began to create a project, look for people who would advise us, began to travel to museums around the world, collect experience.

— Were you guided by someone's advice when creating the concept of the museum?

- You know, a great woman played a huge role here - Ekaterina Yuryevna Genieva, director of the library of foreign literature. A completely unique, outstanding, brilliant culturologist. She unfortunately died last year. We discussed the museum project for a very long time and developed a certain concept. I trust her opinion one hundred percent. In addition, we have implemented a large-scale a joint project— brought paintings to regional libraries. And the effect was fantastic. Libraries, which no one visits at all now, had 600-700 people a day, and people asked to extend the opening hours.

— In one of the interviews, you said that you did not hope to ever recoup the costs of the project. How much did the museum cost you?

- We did not set ourselves such a goal as to pay off. The museum is very dear story. It's tens of millions of dollars. But the main thing is that it still needs to be maintained. By the way, I hope that according to our business plan the museum will earn money. But the fact that it will not pay off, that's for sure. Plus, the museum's collection will be constantly updated and replenished, and this is also a cost.

I do not feel sorry for money for paintings.

— Let's talk about the museum's collection. Do you buy paintings directly to his fund, or will it consist of paintings already in your personal collection?

— I have been buying for many years, realizing that these are works for the museum. Of course, I also buy graphics for my home, for example, which are not suitable for a museum. For the permanent exhibition, I donated a total of about a hundred works. During the opening we will show 80 of them. There will be two exhibitions: the main exhibition and a temporary exhibition dedicated to the works of Arnold Lakhovsky. At one time, Lakhovsky went to France, and died in general in America. But in terms of painting, education, spirit, style, this is an absolutely Russian artist. And before us, no one had ever shown it in such a volume. And we got a very beautiful exhibition - there are 54 paintings in it.

— Less than a hundred works in the permanent exhibition ... Do you think the modern viewer is generally accustomed to a long and thoughtful acquaintance with art? How long is his attention?

- You know, we, in fact, proceeded from this. Modern man can be in the museum for an hour and a half, maybe two, but no more. During this time, he will receive both aesthetic pleasure and learn something new. We have about a thousand meters of exposition area. However, we only take up half of it as a permanent exhibition. Why? Because we wanted the following combination to turn out - on the one hand, people look directly at the painting, on the other, there is a multimedia part. We found one american guy, which, using a special technology, can “undress” any picture in layers to a blank canvas. And in impressionism, this is the most interesting thing. After all, impressionism is a volume of space that is set by color. Here you are looking, for example, at a painted forest. And you have a smear of the sky, if you get close, written on top of the trees. And when you step back, you see the depth. And if you gradually, layer by layer, remove strokes, you can see how the picture was formed.

Museum of Russian Impressionism

— Do you have a psychological bar for the cost of a painting that you, as a buyer, will not exceed?

- If you want to buy an impressionistic work by Kandinsky, you must understand that it will be at least $ 700 thousand. And if it is good job, it can cost two or three million. But there are no Russian impressionists for ten million. This is only French: Monet, Renoir.

Now I buy less, because the business situation has changed, and the income is not the same as before. Now the main thing is to keep the salary and raise it at least a little so that people can work. You need to invest in a business, create a cushion. But we hope that after a while the market will start to recover. Do you have a "collector's dream"? A painting that you would very much like to acquire or a specific artist that you don't have yet? Serov, for example?

- No, I have Serov. But I would love to buy it again. Just like Kandinsky and Malevich. They have very good impressionistic works that I don't have. But there are very few of them on the market. I do not feel sorry for money for paintings. And my wife supports me in this sense.

— Are there works in your collection that were taken out of Russia, and then returned back to their homeland thanks to you?

- Yes, sure. And not just a dozen. For example, Kustodiev's painting "Venice". These works will be included in the exhibition, and the viewer will see them.

— Boris Iosifovich, how much do you think art is in demand among the Russian mass audience today?

“It seems to me that the viewer has begun to go to museums better. Firstly, there was a choice - galleries, private museums, for example, Zvereva, "Garage". Such great museums as the Tretyakov Gallery and Pushkin Museum began to work more actively. The same Serov - it was a great exhibition. Spectators came and saw a whole galaxy of people who lived on turn of XIX-XX centuries.

A Pushkin Museum. They brought the work of Caravaggio recently. And it does not matter that there were two or three works, because the viewer had not seen them before. In London you come to the museum, there are ten works in total, but there is a queue for them in the rain. We still have a different culture. You see, if you follow this logic, you can’t make a museum of Russian impressionism if you don’t have Serov’s portrait of Korovin, or “Girl with Peaches”. But from my point of view, this is the wrong approach. You can not collect all the masterpieces.

— Does the state today promote art and, in general, help such private initiatives like yours?

We don't need help, we don't need to interfere.

On January 31, the Museum of Russian Impressionism hosted the official opening of the exhibition "Wives", which included almost 50 portraits of beloved great Russian artists. Among them are the works of Ilya Repin, Mikhail Vrubel, Valentin Serov, Boris Kustodiev, Igor Grabar, Pyotr Konchalovsky, Boris Grigoriev, Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, Alexander Deineka, Robert Falk and many others.

This exhibition shows how Russian art since late XIX until the middle of the 20th century through the prism of portraits of the wives of the great Russian masters, from classical feminine images to resolute revolutionaries.

The organizers of the exhibition tried to involve the audience in the atmosphere of the works, supplementing the exposition with directional sound domes, where excerpts from the artists' letters to their lovers are heard, fragrances illustrating the content of the paintings, and real objects repeating the images of the paintings. Visitors to the exhibition could listen to the smell of the sea, a thunderstorm, a garden after rain or wild flowers - all that is depicted in the paintings. In addition, the guests of the evening were invited to listen to excursions and use a free audio guide, voiced by a friend of the Museum - Sergey Chonishvili. In him famous actor tells why Ilya Repin's wife fed hay cutlets, how Margarita Konenkova, a Soviet spy, influenced the creation of the atomic bomb, and who was the prototype of the replicated "workers" and "sportswomen" from Soviet posters.

Special Representative of the President Russian Federation for International Cultural Cooperation, Ambassador for special assignments Mikhail Shvydkoi noted : “This exhibition is a very bold project. Pre-revolutionary life was replaced by post-revolutionary life, and what seemed in the period silver age refined and romantically sublime - it became worldly rude. This is one of the most difficult tests for the artist and his muse. The exhibition is interesting in that it reflects the movement from one world to another. I have no doubt that it will arouse great interest.”

Deputy Head of the Department of Culture of the City of Moscow Vladimir Filippov:“It is very important that the Museum of Russian Impressionism has one of the highest audience loyalty indexes - 95% of the Museum visitors note that they are ready to return here, come back and recommend the project to their friends. Measuring the loyalty index in museum management is an important and integral part of any success. Such high figures indicate that the Museum is becoming an increasingly important point in the cultural landscape of Moscow.”

Founder of the Museum of Russian Impressionism, entrepreneur and collector Boris Mints noted: “The museum team has learned to bring the most daring ideas to life, finding unique works for which I am very grateful to them. In our exhibition activities, we are not strictly attached to impressionism, we try to show the diversity of painting. This year promises to be rich in exhibitions. The museum will present many bright, interesting projects!”

Director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism Julia Petrova: “The exhibition covers the period of the most revolutionary, sharp turns in the history of Russian art. Among the presented heroines were both those who remained in history only thanks to the portrait of their husband, and those who entered their name in history on their own. Such as the singer Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel, the choreographer and Stalin Prize laureate Nadezhda Nadezhdina (wife of the painter and graphic artist Vladimir Lebedev) or the Soviet spy Margarita Konenkova. To all of them, famous or forgotten, our exhibition is dedicated.”

Vladimir Vdovichenkov and Elena Lyadova, Alena Doletskaya, Alexei Uchitel, Ekaterina Mtsituridze, Olga Sviblova, Evgenia Linovich, Elena Ischeeva, Alexei Ananiev, Marianna Maksimovskaya, Mikhail Grushevsky, Andrey Nazimov, Regina von Flemming, Olga and Charles Thompson were the first to get acquainted with the fate of famous lovers and many others.

An illustrated catalog was published for the exhibition, which for the first time combined several dozen portraits and personal stories of the wives of Russian artists under one cover.

Museum of Russian Impressionism

The Museum of Russian Impressionism was opened to visitors in May 2016. It is located in a historical complex of industrial buildings of the late 19th century. A unique project of restoration and creation of a modern museum space was implemented by the British architectural bureau John McAslan + Partners.

The main exposition consists of paintings from the collection of the founder of the museum, Boris Mints: works by prominent Russian artists Konstantin Korovin and Valentin Serov, Stanislav Zhukovsky and Igor Grabar, Konstantin Yuon and Boris Kustodiev, Pyotr Konchalovsky and Alexander Gerasimov.

The museum considers its mission to popularize Russian art in general and its impressionistic component in particular, both in Russia and abroad. The museum has earned the respect of the international museum community and is a member of the International Council of Museums ICOM.

More than a thousand square meters of exhibition space, a multimedia hall, an educational interactive zone, a training studio, a cafe, a book and souvenir shop - the new museum is a cultural space that combines exhibition work with scientific, publishing and educational activities.

Director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism Yulia Petrova.

Zaslavsky: In the studio Grigory Zaslavsky, good afternoon. And I am pleased to introduce our guest - this is the director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism that has just opened in Moscow, Yulia Petrova. Julia, I welcome you to the Vesti FM studio, hello.

Petrova: Hello.

Zaslavsky: Tell me, please, in general, as far as I understand, your founder, the founder, owns this entire Bolshevik complex. Yes or no?

Petrova: Exactly, yes.

Zaslavsky: Yes. And how, why did you choose from all these wonderful buildings (for a person with experience, each of them is associated with something sweet and beautiful, "Jubilee" cookies, "Strawberry", delicious cakes), why did you choose this one from all these buildings here is a flour mill in the back of the block, to which you still need to go? And, in general, this is in many ways a new museum space for Moscow inside. Well, maybe this can be compared with Vasnetsov's house hidden among the lanes. Now I immediately began to look for some associations.

Petrova: Go there not far. And we ourselves like it, and the guests are already leaving reviews that the Bolshevik has been reconstructed very beautifully, and you walk along it, like in London. This is true, it is very talentedly done now. We chose this building (round in plan, a cylinder, a cylinder without windows) precisely because our paintings do not really need street daylight, in general it is not very useful for museum paintings. And if in ordinary museums (museums, excuse me, not in ordinary ones, but in those located in more traditional premises), employees are forced to somehow deal with light, hang heavy curtains, then we don’t have such a problem. There are no windows, no glare, nothing interferes with the perception of painting. The building seemed to us in this regard very convenient. And besides, since it had no historical value, like the front building on Leningradsky Prospekt, which was literally restored to the detail according to archival photographs, according to documents, our building, built in the 60s of the 20th century, had no historical value, which, of course, allowed us to convert it into a museum almost completely. It remained in its forms, but inside its layout has completely changed.

Zaslavsky: But it's interesting, very often, when some such new buildings are being made in Russia, they often take some foreign, English or some other institution as an analogue. Is there any sample, was it for the Museum of Russian Impressionism, both in terms of its external decision, and in terms of its internal content? Well, even, maybe, based on the fact that the team that did it was probably foreign. Or not, right?

Petrova: Foreign architect - British architectural bureau John McAslan + Partners.

Zaslavsky: Have they already made some kind of museums?

Petrova: They generally specialize in cultural sites. In Moscow, they did "The Stanislavsky Factory" with the theater studio of Sergei Zhenovach. And so we turned to them, being absolutely sure of the quality of what will turn out. "Factory Stanislavsky", who was there, they know that it is amazingly made both qualitatively and beautifully.

Zaslavsky: And the office part, and the theater, yes, I agree, yes.

Petrova: And the office part, and the theater, and the apartments that are located there.

Zaslavsky: I was not in the apartment.

Petrova: I haven’t been inside either, but from the outside it all looks very, very worthy, in uniform style and very high level. Therefore, we turned to this architectural bureau without any hesitation. Were they equal to any existing samples? To be honest, I'm not sure.

Listen in full on the audio version.

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