«The Time of Change. Fine Arts 1960-1985 in the Soviet Union»

April 27 - July 27, 2006

On April, 27, 2006 the opening of the exhibition “The Time of Change. Fine Arts 1960-1985 in the Soviet Union” took place in the State Russian Museum. The exposition was dedicated to the official and unofficial art of the period, when ideology and political events were exerting great influence on public life and causing the society to be divided into two camps.

The exhibition encompassed more than 200 works from the collection of the State Russian Museum, the “Ekaterina” Cultural Foundation and other private collections. For the first time within the framework of this large-scale project the works of nearly all representatives of the so-called unofficial art were displayed, many of which had been scattered over private collection and remained inaccessible to a regular visitor. These were the works of artists of the Lianozov Group – Leo Kropivnitsky, Anatoly Zverev, Oscar Rabin, Vladimir Veisberg, Dymitry Krasnopevtsev, Vladimir Nemukhin, Lydia Masterkova, Dymitry Plavinsky, also Michael Shvartsman, Vladimir Yannkillevsky, Oleg Tselkov, as well as of the next generation of artists – Ylia Kabakov and Victor Pivovarov.

Interestingly enough, a similar fate awaited the works of official painters – the exhibitions of the so-called ‘official art’ of this period had almost not been taking place in the course of the last 10 years, and many outstanding paintings had been stuck in museum reserves never being actually exhibited.

Alongside the works of ‘severe style’ by Korzheva, Moiseenko, Andronova and Nikonova, the exposition included the paintings of Nazarenko, Nesterova, Sitnikova, Bulgakova.

The exhibition culminated on a major note – that difficult period had become “the time of Change”, of detente, which had released ‘the underground’ of 1980-1990.

The atmosphere of that time was recreated in the installation “A typical flat”. It reproduced a two-room flat in the so-called “khruschevka” house filled with easily recognizable objects of the Soviet epoch: a typical bookcase, a Romanian set of furniture with a polished table, a record player, an old TV set “Record”. On the walls were small-sized reproductions, as it had been customary then.

The “Ekaterina” Cultural Foundation has contributed some paintings of unofficial artists, “the non-conformists” to the exhibition; it also took part in the making of the installation “A typical flat” and participated in the publication of the catalogue.

The Cultural Foundation “Ekaterina” has ordered a film-chronicle “The Time of Change” telling about the life and work of unofficial painters. It includes a famous episode of Khrustschev’s visit to Manezh, and unique shots of Lianozovo and brief interviews with the painters.

The exhibition ran till July, 27, 2006 (The State Russian Museum, the Benua House, Canal Griboedova, 2).

To mark the opening of the exhibition in the Russian Museum a full catalogue “The time of change. Fine Art 1960- 1985 in the Soviet Union” has been published (The Palace Edition Publishers).