Divine and avanguarde | Palazzo Reale

A chapter entirely dedicated to women told by masterpieces of Russian artists: from inspirational muses and icons to protagonists and creators of masterpieces in the history of art that have influenced later generations.

 

This exhibition gives us an idea of Russian art and the fundamental role of women in the country. A rich corpus of works, means of expression and different techniques highlight the role of women in society in promoting their emancipation and acknowledgement of their rights.

 

Around 90 masterpieces, most of which never previously seen in Italy, in a story that unfolds through 8 different sections and 2 major chapters: on the one hand women and their role in society (saints and Holy Maries, empresses, farm hands and factory workers, intellectuals and mothers) depicted by important master painters: Il’ja Repin, Boris Kustodiev and Filipp Matjavin, Suprematist Kazimir Malevich, the artists of the years from 1910 to 1930, Aleksandr Dejneka and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, the artist who painted the portrait of poet Anna Achmatova, to mention just a few. On the other hand, women artists “The Amazons of the Russian avant-garde”: female exponents of an extraordinary cultural, historic and social atmosphere, active in the early 1930s when they created original, innovative masterpieces: Natalia Goncharova, Ljubov Popova, Aleksandra Ekster as well as artists depicting socialist realism such as the sculptor Vera Mukhina with her bronze model of the statue Worker and Kolhoz Woman, commissioned for the USSR’s pavilion at the 1937 Paris Expo.

 

An exhibition Comune di Milano - Cultura, Palazzo Reale, CMS Cultura in collaboration with Museo di Stato Russo di San Pietroburgo with the support of Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e il Turismo, Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale, Consolato Generale della Federazione Russa

Official sponsor VTB

Curated by Evgenia Petrova, Direttore Scientifico del Museo Russo, e Joseph Kiblitsky.