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| From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1925: from Moscow and St Petersburg | 
 enlarge | Authors: Albert Kostenevich, Mikhail Piotrovsky, Anna Poznanskaya
Publisher: Royal Academy of Arts
Category: Book
List Price: £45.00
Buy New: £29.25
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 39327
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 312
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.4
Dimensions (in): 11.2 x 8.8 x 1.3
ISBN: 1905711158
Dewey Decimal Number: 759.4074
EAN: 9781905711154
ASIN: 1905711158
Publication Date: April 7, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
From Russia with Art June 3, 2008
The book is a gem. It is original, significant and conceptually profound. The text is excellent, meticulously and authoritatively written by people with knowledge, love, intimacy and excitement for their subject, exquisitely illustrated with colour plates of the pictures accompanied by insightful notes and a detailed provenance. The part on Russian paintings was a revelation for me while I was fascinated by the story and cardinal significance of the two great Russian collectors of French paintings namely Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov and the phenomenal intuition in divining artistic merit of the former. An interesting realization in early twentieth century avant-garde was the significant number of exemplary female painters.
The book title'From Russia:French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1920 from Moscow and St Petersburg' is descriptive and precise as befits an exhibition catalogue. The venue for the exhibitions:Museum Kunst Palast, Dusseldorf 15 September 2007-6 January 2008 and Royal Academy of Arts, London 26 January-18 April 2008.
The exhibition comprise 120 paintings by Russian and French artists active at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century who have emerged as the greatest pioneers of the main directions of modern art. All paintings were drawn from the four premier Russian museums:the State Puskin Museum and the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the State Hermitage Museum and the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg.
Introductory statements comprise:A preface by the sponsor, a foreword by the President, Royal Academy of Arts, separate statements by the four Directors of the Russian Museums and a Curators' preface.
Of the preceding I found the introduction by Vladimir Gusyev, Director of the State Russian Museum of exceptional literary merit while the Curators'preface presents an outstanding distillate on the content, essence and scope of the exhibition.
The main body of the book is organized in two parts, France and Russia. The structure of the two parts is similar i.e articles relating to the evolution of painting movements in the two countries and their artistic cross-fertilization, followed by colour plates and finally by short biographies of the artists represented in the exhibition. The book concludes with a chronicle of events in the cultural and political life in France and Russia.
In French painting there are fine specimens of Impressionism represented by Manet, Monet and Renoir;Post-Impressionism by Gauguin, Cezanne and a single work by Van Gogh;Fauvism by Matisse;and Cubism by Braque and Picasso. I reminisce the visual impact on me -when visiting the Hermitage years ago-of the superb yellow paintings by Gauguin and the huge canvas 'The Dance' by Matisse. But still I was familiar with most French paintings in the book.
By contrast Russian paintings had on me the impact of 'the shock of the new'. With the exception of a tiny minority comprising Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky the father of abstraction, Kazimir Malevich linked with Suprematism and Vladimir Tatlin linked with Costructivism, all other Russian artists and their work was uknown to me. And all paintings I cite below, I encountered for the first time in this book including the paintings by Malevich and Tatlin.
A good starting point is 'Portrait of Anna Akhmatova' by Nathan Altman which graces the cover of the book and 'Lady at the Piano' by the same artist;'Head of a Peasant', a magnificent symbolist painting by Kazemir Malevich. The rest of the paintings I cite follow the sequence they appear in the plates which is chronological. 'Moscow Courtyard' by Vasily Polenov;'October 17, 1905', a truly moving picture by Ilya Repin;'Paris' by Konstantin Korovin;'Female Model', a superb nude by Vladimir Tatlin;'Bathing the Red Horse', a gorgeous painting by Kuzma Petrov-Votkin and by the same artist 'Virgin of Tender Mercy', unquestionably the most beautiful Byzantine icon I have viewed in my life;'The Promenade' by Marc Chagall;'Moscow' by Aristarkh Lentulov, a stellar painting with kaleidoscopic colours and sumptuous volumes; and finally 'The City at Night' by Alexandra Exter, a luminous Cubo-Futuristic painting.
I conclude with a word of caution:though the book is fascinating and the text rich in content still it is scholarly written and requires concentration and focusing of one's mind and this is particularly true of the last three of the five articles comprising the Russian part.
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