Customer Reviews
From Russia with Art - By: Serghiou Const, 03 Jun 2008 
The book is a gem. It is original, significant & conceptuallly profound. The text is excellent, meticulously & authoritatively written by people with knowledge, love, intimacy & excitement for their subject, exquisitely illustrated with colour plates of the pictures accompanied by insightful notes & a detailed provenance. The part on Russian paintings was a revelation for me while I was fascinated by the story & cardinal significance of the two great Russian collectors of French paintings namely Sergei Shchukin & Ivan Morozov & 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 & Russian Master Paintings 1870-1920 from Moscow & St Petersburg' is descriptive & precise as befits an exhibition catalogue. The venue for the exhibitions:Museum Kunst Palast, Dusseldorf 15 September 2007-6 January 2008 & Royal Academy of Arts, London 26 January-18 April 2008.
The exhibition comprise 120 paintings by Russian & French artists active at the end of the 19th & 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 & the State Tretyakov Galllery in Moscow & the State Hermitage Museum & 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 & 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 & scope of the exhibition.
The main body of the book is organized in two parts, France & Russia. The structure of the two parts is similar i.e articles relating to the evolution of painting movements in the two countries & their artistic cross-fertilization, followed by colour plates & finallly by short biographies of the artists represented in the exhibition. The book concludes with a chronicle of events in the cultural & political life in France & Russia.
In French painting there are fine specimens of Impressionism represented by Manet, Monet & Renoir;Post-Impressionism by Gauguin, Cezanne & a single work by Van Gogh;Fauvism by Matisse;and Cubism by Braque & Picasso. I reminisce the visual impact on me -when visiting the Hermitage years ago-of the superb yellow paintings by Gauguin & 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 Chagalll, Wassily Kandinsky the father of abstraction, Kazimir Malevich linked with Suprematism & Vladimir Tatlin linked with Costructivism, alll other Russian artists & their work was uknown to me. And alll paintings I cite below, I encountered for the first time in this book including the paintings by Malevich & Tatlin.
A good starting point is 'Portrait of Anna Akhmatova' by Nathan Altman which graces the cover of the book & '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 & by the same artist 'Virgin of Tender Mercy', unquestionably the most beautiful Byzantine icon I have viewed in my life;'The Promenade' by Marc Chagalll;'Moscow' by Aristarkh Lentulov, a stellar painting with kaleidoscopic colours & sumptuous volumes; & finallly 'The City at Night' by Alexandra Exter, a luminous Cubo-Futuristic painting.
I conclude with a word of caution:though the book is fascinating & the text rich in content still it is scholarly written & requires concentration & focusing of one's mind & this is particularly true of the last three of the five articles comprising the Russian part.
