Austerity & Aesthetics

April 23 - May 31, 2026

Curated by Olga Tobleruts

The idea for the exhibition was born back in 2010. Bringing together works by famed artists, many of which are held in private and museum collections, was no easy task, but it became possible with the support of the Ekaterina Culture Foundation.

The concept of Austerity and Aesthetics traces its origins to Timur Novikov's New Academy of Fine Arts. The 1990s in Russia were a decade of change, liberty, and permissiveness. For some Neo-Academist artists, this exuberant period of merrymaking was followed by a phase of self-restraint and asceticism, as many took a turn toward religion, prayer, and solitude. In the late 1990s, Novikov was diagnosed with a disease that caused him to lose his sight. Blind in both eyes, he continued working as an artist and educator. He gathered around him an even larger circle of creative people, including artists, writers, and art historians, and began publishing the newspaper The Great Artistic Will. He also wrote The Manifesto of the European Society for the Preservation of Classical Aesthetics, urging contemporary artists to embrace repentance and revive traditional artistic practices. Around the same time, the New Serious movement emerged, and the New Academy split into two factions: the Serious Ones and the Non-Serious Ones. Bright colors gradually disappeared from the artists' palettes. Strict adherence to the sequence of stages and traditional painterly techniques began to prevail over experimentation. The New Serious movement attracted more and more like-minded artists, with many painters, who had spent their lives celebrating Beauty, joining its ranks.

The artists featured in the exhibition are not all followers of the New Academy. Many of the works are included rather for their impeccable execution or the beauty of the image they embody. Also on display are pieces by conceptualists and a new generation of young artists from various movements who, too, admire beauty and whose individual works do not contradict the idea of austerity and aesthetics. These works highlight more ways to pursue the ideal, proving that perfection is something we all strive for. In the history of art, paintings have often conquered the viewers' hearts regardless of the ideas proclaimed by their creators.

The exhibition Austerity & Aesthetics offers an opportunity to view contemporary art from a different perspective - that of an unbroken dialogue with the past, of a desire to bring forth and leave behind seeds of inspiration for future generations of artists and admirers of beauty.