An exhibition of the collection of Boris Mints has opened in Venice, and by the end of the year the Museum of Russian Impressionism should open in Moscow. Mysterious Russian impressionism will attract the public, the collector is sure

Boris Mints
Entrepreneur, collector
1958 born into the family of a military engineer

1980 Graduated from the Faculty of Physics of Ivanovo State University. Candidate of Technical Sciences

1980s work at the Department of Higher Mathematics of the Ivanovo Textile Academy and in one of the NTTM centers

1990s Vice-Mayor of the city of Ivanovo, Head of the Main Directorate of the State Property Committee, Head of the Presidential Directorate for Local Self-Government

2000s creates the Union of Right Forces party, heads the Otkritie financial corporation and the REN TV media holding

Now Chairman of the Board of Directors of the investment holding O1 Group. Actual State Councilor, 1st class. Engaged in charitable and social activities

When they first started talking about your museum, I came across the following explanation: there is the museum’s collection, and there is your own collection, that is, the collection of the Museum of Russian Impressionism is one thing, and your personal is another. There was another explanation: that the museum’s collection is part of your personal collection. So what is the principle?

I collect not only Russian impressionism. For example, I really like Alexander Benois. I buy any good Benoit; I probably have 40 works. I love it very much Boris Kustodiev. Yes, I love many! Valentina Serova, for example (but it is very difficult to buy), Igor Grabar. From today's - Valeria Koshlyakova, I consider him an outstanding artist of our time. And I even show some of his works in connection with impressionism. Of course, this is not impressionism, but they were written under its influence.

What about contemporary art besides Koshlyakov?

There are many different things: and Ilya Kabakov, and what not. But this does not mean that everything should be given to a museum. In addition, not all works are of museum quality. Therefore, from the works that I had, art critics selected five to six dozen of those that, in their opinion, met such criteria. And when it was decided that there should be a museum, I began to invest money in its creation. That’s why I mostly buy Russian impressionism now. I used to buy everything I liked, but now I do it less often. Simply because resources are not limitless, and, I must say, work is becoming more expensive every day.

How many items will be in the permanent museum exhibition?

I think the permanent exhibition should be small, about 50-70 paintings. This may not apply to professionals, but in general a modern person cannot stay in a museum for more than two hours in principle. And Western exhibitions are designed in such a way that a person spends a maximum of two hours in a confined space. Just because people don't like it anymore, you know? Once in my youth, when I had a lot of free time, having arrived in Leningrad, I spent whole days walking around the Russian Museum and the Hermitage. But this is not typical behavior for an ordinary person - to spend the whole day, especially a weekend, in a museum. On weekends, people mainly want to sleep longer.

Yulia Petrova
Director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism

The building, which is allocated to the Museum of Russian Impressionism on the territory of the Bolshevik Cultural and Business Complex, in the old factory times was a storage facility for flour and milk powder. This particular building has no historical value; it is late, so we had the opportunity to completely refurbish it. We set ourselves the task of making the museum building as convenient as possible for organizing exhibitions and other events: it has thought out not only the maintenance of temperature and humidity conditions, but also competent safe storage, an entrance area, a loading and unloading area for vehicles that will bring exhibits to exhibitions, special elevators. The reconstruction project was prepared by the London bureau John McAslan + partners. In addition, on the advice of the architect, we engaged renowned museum consultants Lord Cultural Resources: they supported us at the initial stage, helped us draw up an action plan, brought us up to date, and warned us about a number of nuances. Reconstruction work began in 2012, and we expect to complete it this fall.

The Bolshevik factory is not exactly a holy place. Not very famous.

This is still unknown. Let's do it and it will be known. The Garage was also once unknown. Fame is such a thing... And “Bolshevik” is a very convenient place. Close to the center, but not in the very center. Accordingly, we have solved all parking problems, and the museum is not far from the metro, so in this sense all categories of our visitors will be satisfied. If we make a good product, then the place will become popular. In Saratov, when we showed Kustodiev’s painting Venice, 6 thousand people came in ten days, it was so interesting and unusual. Imagine a provincial library where 600 people came every day! The day before the exhibition closed, even the governor came to see it - because, well, everyone is talking about it.

Our serious advantage is that from the very beginning we are creating a completely modern museum. It can be said that there is no such space in the country that meets all the requirements of the museum business. This is the problem with Russian museums. For example, the Hermitage has a wonderful collection, fantastically professional people, but the premises themselves? To make a normal modern museum, palaces need to be rebuilt, but rebuilding architectural monuments is prohibited. And the Pushkin Museum named after. Pushkin, and other museums whose buildings were built in the last century or the century before last, are very difficult to modernize. It's different in Europe. For example, the building of the main museum of impressionism, Orsay in Paris, was specially rebuilt from a former train station. Thanks to our consultants and architects, we managed to create an optimal project. I know collectors (I don’t want to name names) who almost never give their work to exhibitions for one simple reason: the space is wrong. They feel sorry for the work, which will be in an unknown temperature regime.

Following. We are doing a serious multimedia project that, I think, will be of interest to young people. It is already close to completion, technically everything is ready. It seems to me that this is important in itself, because before in Russia no one had ever presented works of art in this form. A painting is taken, photographed in a special way, and thanks to this, the viewer observes how it was painted, how it turned into what it became. All this can be seen on the Internet, and through social networks you can keep abreast of all our news.

The first permanent exhibition will be built on a chronological basis and will include textbook names ( Konstantin Korovin, Valentin Serov, Igor Grabar), and authors well known to specialists and much less to the general public ( Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky, Sergei Vinogradov, Nikolai Dubovskoy). We will start from Vasily Polenov and his closest students, consider representatives of the circle of the Union of Russian Artists and the early impressionistic experiments of the avant-garde artists ( Mikhail Larionov, Vladimir Baranov-Rossine), let's move on to the post-revolutionary period: here we can talk about “quiet”, non-exhibition impressionism ( Yuri Pimenov and such forgotten authors as Valentina Diffine-Christie), and even about the impressionistic works of the pillars of socialist realism. So, we will show the Parisian view Alexandra Gerasimova, who arrived in France in 1934 and there remembered what Konstantin Korovin taught him.

I’m talking about the first permanent exhibition because, in our opinion, everything needs to be changed from time to time: different things should be hung, of course, leaving the key works.

For temporary exhibitions we will have two halls, large and small. There are already a number of agreements with regional museums on joint projects. The low level of development of domestic tourism in our country leads to the fact that magnificent regional collections are practically unknown to Muscovites.

Explain the logic of events. Russian impressionism is only a pretext for such a public space as a museum, but would a museum have arisen in any case? Or is public space a consequence of the fact that you began to specialize in Russian impressionism?

When I started collecting the collection, I didn’t even imagine that I would someday create a museum.

In general, what is more in this story - planning or chance?

There are two different stories here. The story of my collecting is like, poetically speaking, a secret desire. To start collecting, you first need to earn some money, as you understand. And only when the desire coincided with the possibilities, real, meaningful collecting began. But in the process, of course, views always change. At some point, it became clear to me that there is a little-studied and little-represented Russian impressionism that is not in the focus of art criticism - absolutely, from my point of view, underestimated. Nobody collected these things specifically as Russian impressionism. As a direction in the history of Russian art, it is practically not designated.

What was the reason for the discovery of the topic “Russian impressionism”? With a specific purchase? Or a pure idea?

No, I didn’t dream about it ready-made, like a table Mendeleev. I just began to read more about Russian painting, and when I was in Paris, I went to museums. There are many museums there, not as famous as Orsay, but with collections from about the same time, only smaller. They also have Claude Monet, and other great names; There are also less famous ones, although the quality of their painting, it seems to me, is not worse at all. (As PR people joke: what is the difference between a mouse and a hamster? PR, and nothing else.) And when I already had a dozen or two works on the topic and I was delving deeper into it, I thought it would be right to raise it on this very topic level. And the course of events confirms that I was right. When we were preparing an exhibition for Venice, for the Palazzo Franchetti, a professor from the Milan Academy of Arts came and said that we had collected absolutely brilliant works. And this is the opinion of a representative of one of the most outstanding educational institutions in the field of arts in Europe.

Valentin Serov. "Window". 1887

How did your collecting even begin?

Mainly from graphics - Benoit, World of Art. I bought a lot of contemporary Moscow artists: I just wanted to liven up the house, and I didn’t have much money. I was an official in the 1990s, and it seemed to me that it was not very correct for an official to engage in collecting. Later, when I went first into management, then into business, things got better both with money and with time... And I’ve been looking at pictures all my life. I have a huge library, I constantly go to museums, to collectors, to dealers who help with collecting.

Does it take a lot of time?

In order. The auctions for which we are preparing are a lot of work: you need to look through everything, choose, go to see it live... Not only in London, but also in Moscow. We have several very good auctions, and with them several very good teams who collect decent things. We bought a lot of things in Moscow.

Do you buy mostly at auctions?

Yes. About half are works that were exported from the country many years ago, and sometimes have never been to Russia at all. The same Venetian Kustodiev: there is no doubt that it is he, the work is known, but has fallen out of sight. When the painting was brought to St. Petersburg, specialists from the Russian Museum came up and asked: “Listen, where did you get it? We thought she was missing."

About this and the specifics of the work

at the private museum Posta-Magazine, its director Yulia Petrova told.

“This is my favorite job and, undoubtedly, my lucky ticket,- Julia admits as soon as we start the conversation. - We have such a narrow labor market and so few opportunities for expression; the state graduates many more people in my specialty than is required. Many of my peers do not even hope to work in their specialty. And you certainly shouldn’t expect to become a museum director. This is something that, in general, one cannot dream about, and there is no need to make such plans either. In youth, no one says: “When I graduate from college and become the director of a museum.”.

Be that as it may, in the life of Yulia Petrova everything turned out exactly as it turned out. For several years she was the curator of the private collection of businessman and philanthropist Boris Mints, and after the opening of the Museum of Russian Impressionism she became its director. And this, of course, has its pros and cons,” Yulia herself admits. Meetings with family, for example, become rare because most of the time is spent within the walls of the museum.

Nika Koshar: Julia, you always talk so beautifully about your work. But you are still an art critic. And, having become a director, you probably had to take on a lot of administrative matters. How difficult was it for you?

: Well, of course, this is what I have to learn today. In general, in our society there is a cliche that art critics or “people of art” are very spiritual people who exclusively sigh under the moon. Fortunately for me, I am a fairly rational person: just like art history, I have always loved mathematics, I feel comfortable in it. And what happens in a museum is more often subject to instinct and common sense. And if you have a flair and a little common sense, it works. Of course, you need to learn a lot: both administrative skills and management skills. A team has assembled, and it must be led.

Did you assemble the team yourself?

Yes, myself. I personally selected everyone who works here, and I can firmly say that each of our employees (most often, of course, female employees) is a rare find. And they are all passionate about their work.

How ambitious are the museum's plans?

You know, when Boris Mints invited me to participate in the creation of a museum and shared with me his desire to open it, it seemed to me that this was an extremely ambitious plan. But since it came true, then, in principle, everything we are planning is no longer so scary. For example, exhibitions abroad. In fact, we are already holding them: we have held exhibitions in Venice, in Freiburg, and on October 6 a very beautiful exhibition will open at the National Gallery of Bulgaria. ​Of course, I would like to “cover” not only Europe, but also the East and the United States, but there are difficulties of a legal nature, international ones, and not just museum ones. Of course, I would like to do unusual projects within these walls, and to bring top-tier artists: Russian, Western, contemporary (like Koshlyakov), and classics. I myself gravitate more towards the classics.

Well, Koshlyakov, it seems to me that this is a symbiosis of classics and modernity. He's somewhere in between.

Yes. He is one of those artists who, as he himself puts it, is engaged in painting. Unlike the bulk of contemporary contemporary art artists who create concepts. Its difference is also that each individual work is a work without context, without concept. That’s why he is so in demand, he is loved, I know he sells well, and any appearance of Koshlyakov’s paintings at auctions is always an event.

Tell me, were you ready for the name “Museum of Russian Impressionism” to be disputed for so long in the art world?

Absolutely. Even at the time when we were just planning to create a museum, Boris Iosifovich and I had many hours of conversations about how to do it right. And we understood that the term “Russian impressionism” is extremely controversial and, at the same time, very capacious. It can be disputed from an art historical point of view, although I must say that major experts do not enter into debate on this matter. But it is a term that instantly paints a certain picture. And the fact that art critics break mines and argue - well, yes, that’s how it is. The St. Petersburg art critic Mikhail German, whom I greatly respect, wrote an entire book called “Impressionism and Russian Painting,” the main idea of ​​which is that Russian impressionism never existed and does not exist. At the same time, there are brilliant specialists, such as Vladimir Lenyashin or Ilya Doronchenkov. In general, we went for it consciously and understanding that yes, we would have to fight for the name, and that they wouldn’t pat us on the head for it. But, on the other hand, the caravan moves on...

Can you please tell us how the main collection was formed? How did the main sacrament take place?

You probably know that our permanent exhibition is based on the collection of Boris Mints. Any private collection is first assembled according to the taste of the acquirer. Then, usually, the collector understands the logic of what he is acquiring, and suddenly, at some point, it becomes clear that what you are collecting has a certain outline. Then you begin to add to this outline those works without which nothing will work. So, for example, already knowing that there would be a museum, I thought about what kind of paintings could be added to the collection so that the permanent exhibition would be representative, so that it would answer the questions that viewers have. It became obvious to me that this collection should include, for example, works by Yuri Pimenov. And we bought two of his works. So the collection becomes more and more complete, it grows, ​necessary fragments are added to it.

Is the word “upgrade” appropriate here?

More like "stringing". It's like putting together a puzzle: it grows on different sides, and you try to make it complete and add details from different sides.

Do you have a favorite place here?

Favorite places change, and this is due to changes in exhibitions that take place in our museum. Previously, for example, I really loved standing by the central painting at the Lakhovsky exhibition, on the 3rd floor. Now this is, perhaps, a sacred space on the minus first floor. ​The space of the museum​ allows ​to change the geometry of the halls, and this is its absolute advantage. Here you can do something new for each exhibition. I think something will change four times a year. It’s also good in my office (smiles).​

What about your favorite museums and galleries? Which ones would you like to bring here and copy?

This probably cannot be said, but, of course, there are people and teams from whom you learn. At one time I was greatly impressed by how the Pinacothèque of Paris was organized, which closed last winter, to my great regret. It was a brilliant museum, which twice a year exhibited exclusively the first names - they showed Munch, Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Lichtenstein.

There is a stereotype in society that the director of a museum is an older lady, wise with experience. And here in front of me you are young, beautiful, successful. Have you had to prove to people that you are capable of being a leader?

You know, probably not. Of course, as the hero of “Pokrovsky Gate” said, “when you go on stage, you need to strive for one thing: you need to immediately tell everyone who you are, why and why.” Luckily for me, I’m not the first; young museum directors exist successfully, so there’s no need to look for drama here. Thank God there is both. I am very grateful to Boris Iosifovich for trusting young people. We have a young team, but it's very cool. We probably lack experience somewhere, I’m ready to admit it, although it seems to me that we are learning quickly.

Director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism Yulia Petrova.

Zaslavsky: In the studio Grigory Zaslavsky, good afternoon. And I am pleased to introduce our guest - this is the director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism, which has just opened in Moscow, Yulia Petrova. Julia, welcome to the Vesti FM studio, hello.

Petrova: Hello.

Zaslavsky: Please tell us, in general, as far as I understand, your founder, the founder, owns this entire Bolshevik complex. Yes or no?

Petrova: Absolutely right, yes.

Zaslavsky: Yes. And how, why did you choose from all these wonderful buildings (each of them for a person with experience is associated with something sweet and beautiful, “Anniversary” cookies, “Strawberry” cookies, delicious cakes), why did you choose this one out of all these buildings is there a flour mill in the depths of the block, to which you still need to go? And, in general, this kind of museum space inside is largely new for Moscow. Well, maybe this can be compared with Vasnetsov’s house hidden among the alleys. Now I immediately began to look for some associations.

Petrova: It's not far to go there. We ourselves like it, and guests are already leaving reviews that “Bolshevik” has been reconstructed very beautifully, and you walk through it as if you were walking through London. This is the honest truth, it is now very talentedly made. We chose this building (round in plan, cylinder, cylinder without windows) precisely because our paintings do not actually need street daylight; in general, it is not very useful for museum paintings. And if in ordinary museums (museums, sorry, not ordinary ones, but those located in more traditional premises) employees are forced to somehow struggle with the light, hang heavy curtains, then we do not have such a problem. There are no windows, no glare, nothing interferes with the perception of the painting. The building seemed very convenient to us in this regard. And besides, since it did not have historical value, like the front building on Leningradsky Prospekt, which was restored literally to detail using archival photographs, according to documents, our building, built in the 60s of the 20th century, did not have historical value, which, of course, allowed us to convert it almost completely into a museum. It remained in its forms, but its layout inside has completely changed.

Zaslavsky: But it’s interesting, very often, when some new buildings like this are made in Russia, they often take some foreign, English or some other institution as an analogue. Is there any model, was there one for the Museum of Russian Impressionism, both in its external design and in its internal content? Well, maybe even based on the fact that the team that did it was probably foreign. Or not, right?

Petrova: Foreign architect - British architectural bureau John McAslan + Partners.

Zaslavsky: Have they already created any museums?

Petrova: They generally specialize in cultural objects. In Moscow they made “Stanislavsky Factory” with the theater studio of Sergei Zhenovach. And so we turned to them, being absolutely confident in the quality of what we would get. “Stanislavsky Factory”, those who were there, know that it is amazingly made, of high quality and beautiful.

Zaslavsky: Both the office part and the theater part, yes, I agree, yes.

Petrova: And the office part, and the theater part, and the apartments that are located there.

Zaslavsky: I wasn’t in the apartment.

Petrova: I haven’t been inside either, but from the outside it all looks very, very decent, in the same style and at a very high level. Therefore, we turned to this architectural bureau without any fear. Were they similar to any existing models? To be honest, I'm not sure.

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Architects John McAslan + Partners have transformed the former 1960s grain elevator beyond recognition to include permanent and temporary exhibition spaces, lecture space and storage for private collections. Director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism Yulia Petrova told TASS about how a large museum grew from a private collection and what Russian impressionism really is.

Director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism Yulia Petrova

− There was no separate, powerful movement of impressionism in Russian art. How does the museum interpret the concept of Russian impressionism? What time period is allocated to it?

− We focus not on the names of the authors, but on the style of the works. I prefer to talk about the phenomenon of Russian impressionism, rather than about a direction or current. We understand perfectly well that this is not even a fully established term yet, and sometimes we hear complaints against our museum. Some say that Russian impressionism does not exist, others ask who we mean.

- And who do you mean?

− Impressionism affected the work of almost every master of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. It is interesting to show impressionist works of painters who are widely known with works of completely different movements. For example, impressionist paintings are found in the works of Alexander Gerasimov. We have one of his works, written in 1934 in Paris. It surprises and shocks in how much it stands out from his own history and Soviet art of the 1930s.

− How many works are in the museum collection?

− Boris Mints’ collection now contains about 250 works, but not all of them were transferred to the museum. For the main exhibition of the Museum of Russian Impressionism, we selected those exhibits that stylistically correspond to the stated theme. It does not include either contemporary artists or the wonderful selection of graphics from the World of Art: Lanceray and Dobuzhinsky have nothing to do with impressionism. Perhaps we will show them at temporary exhibitions someday.

− What will viewers see in the permanent exhibition of the museum?

− The permanent exhibition of the museum, which will be located on the ground floor, will contain about 80 works. Chronologically they cover the period from the 1870s to about the 1970s.

The main exhibition includes famous names: Konstantin Korovin, Valentin Serov. We have a wonderful work by Kustodiev “Venice”, which we showed at exhibitions before the opening of the museum and which changes the traditional idea of ​​the artist. We are interested in showing another Kustodiev. Of course, we included in the exhibition Yuri Pimenov, who considered himself a realistic impressionist. There will also be a number of artists less known to the general public. For me personally, it was important to talk about each of them so that our visitors would form a complete opinion about both the painter and the person.

- When the museum was announced, it was stated that other collectors would also take part in its programs and permanent exhibition. Are there any concrete plans already?

- Of course, there are agreements, but we would prefer not to reveal the names for now, since we want to preserve a little intrigue. Works from other private collections will appear on permanent display in December. Many artists rarely appear on the art market; some key works for the museum were purchased before us, and the owners are not going to part with them. Therefore, we are negotiating cooperation.

− Our project is humanitarian, it is a philanthropic story. Boris Iosifovich understands perfectly well that our museum, like any other, will never be able to recoup the investment. Our great advantage is that it is possible to purchase new exhibits, and we are constantly working to find and acquire works of art at auctions, from private collectors, and from heirs. And now, when we become more famous, people themselves come to us with offers.

− Does the Museum of Russian Impressionism have consultants?

− I am in charge of determining whether things are suitable for a museum collection. The priority criterion is quality.

− What temporary exhibitions are already planned?

− We now have an exhibition plan until the fall of 2017. We will open up and continue a series of negotiations, because it is important for some potential partners to see what will ultimately happen here. We are ready to free up space throughout the museum for large projects. This year we will show three exhibitions. The first will open simultaneously with the permanent exhibition; this is an exhibition of Arnold Lakhovsky, who is well known to specialists, but not so well to the public. We brought to this exhibition very bright, beautiful works from 10 state museums that cooperate with us.

In the fall we will have an exhibition of "Elysia" by Valery Koshlyakov. There are quite a lot of works by this artist in Mintz’s collection, but Koshlyakov is creating content specifically for this project right now: these will be completely new works that have not yet been seen by anyone. Together with curator Danilo Ecker, director of the Turin Museum of Art, they will do something absolutely fantastic here. They have plans to remodel the showrooms and I think we'll all be pleasantly surprised. Afterwards, the same project will go to the Venice Biennale. At this moment, our permanent exhibition will go on tour abroad, to the very beautiful recently built modern museum of Sofia “Square 500”. And upon our return, in December, we will show the permanent exhibition, already updated.

− That is, you are not going to isolate yourself in the space of the museum?

- Yes, we started this work in 2014, and the fact that we will continue it speaks of its importance and necessity. We showed 50 works in Venice (at the exhibition "With Open Eyes" at Palazzo Franchetti), then at the Augustinian Museum in Freiburg. We started our regional program with Ivanov. “Venice” was eventually seen in Saratov, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and Yuri Pimenov’s works were seen in Voronezh and Ulyanovsk.

− How long did it take you to choose the architectural bureau that designed the museum?

- The choice was made immediately. We are familiar with this bureau from their work with the Stanislavsky Factory, where Sergei Zhenovach’s Theater Arts Studio is located. There, the architects proposed a very interesting solution to change the former factory territory. There, just like on Bolshevik, there is a business center, apartments, and a cultural site.

Since the museum building has no historical value, we were able to reorganize the space and completely adapt it to the museum. This was the main task for the architects.

− Now almost every museum has educational projects, what can we expect from yours?

− We began our educational work in the fall of 2014 with classes for children and adults − and not only on our topic. We have a separate room for classes with children of different ages. It transforms, allows you to put tables and chairs so that you can draw, but you can remove them, put poufs in this place and start a conversation about art. Everything is equipped for viewing illustrations. There is a lecture hall with the possibility of showing films, even in 3D format, where it is planned to show films about art and art films. In the summer it will be possible to buy a subscription or tickets for one-time classes.

Reference
Painting by Boris Kustodiev "Venice"

. Boris Kustodiev's painting "Venice" was painted in 1913. Kustodiev loved and admired Venice very much. He wrote it a little, but with eagerness and love. The painting shows a view of the Cathedral of Santa Maria della Salute and the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore at the confluence of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal in the Schiavone promenade area. The main exhibition in which this work participated took place in 1968 after the master’s death. But this was the most fundamental exhibition of Kustodiev in the Museum of the Academy of Arts. The painting belonged to a private collector. It so happened that it was exported abroad and was not and was not exhibited in Russia until 2013,” said Yulia Petrova, general director of the Museum of Russian Impressionism in Moscow, at the opening of the exhibition.
In 2013, "Venice" was purchased by businessman Boris Mints at an auction in London. As representatives of the MacDougall’s auction house in London told TASS, the canvas was sold for 751.2 thousand pounds sterling.
In February 2016, the painting was exhibited in Yekaterinburg in the Herzen Library as part of the Museum of Russian Impressionism’s “Painting in the Library” project. Now the picture can be seen in Moscow.

The Museum of Russian Impressionism grew out of the home collection of businessman and philanthropist Boris Mints (former president of the Otkritie financial corporation, chairman of the board of directors of the O1 Group, which deals with conventionally fashionable business centers). At the beginning of the 2000s, he began collecting Russian art - at first spontaneously, and then with increasing attention to a stylistic technique reminiscent of French impressionism, but in the works of artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

© Olga Alekseenko

The collection grew to the point that it required a separate space, for which one of the buildings of the former Bolshevik factory on Leningradka (where, among other things, Yubileiny cookies are baked) was useful, which Boris Mintz was developing at that time. As an architect, he chose the eminent architect John McAslan, who recently celebrated his reconstruction King's Cross station in London. In Moscow, McAslan had already successfully converted one of Mintz's acquisitions - the Stanislavsky factory - into an exemplary business center, so there were no questions about the quality of his work. Therefore, as part of his work on the factory, he was asked to transform the former flour warehouse, a quaint well building with a parallelepiped on the roof, into a modern museum.

© Olga Alekseenko

The building at that time was in a deplorable state - an empty well, tiled from floor to ceiling. The flour warehouse was not considered a monument, and according to McAslan's design, little was actually left of the historical building - only the form itself, which was dressed on the outside in perforated metal panels (in the original design, the building's decoration was supposed to be resemble a birch tree - it turned out more boring in life), and the parallelepiped on the roof was glazed and a gallery was built. The empty well was divided into three floors - for this, a concrete module with a spiral staircase of amazing beauty was inserted inside the building.

© Olga Alekseenko

As a result, the museum in the well turned out to be almost tiny: only three exhibition halls - with a permanent collection (in the basement) and temporary exhibitions. The area with all office and storage facilities turns out to be less than 3000 square meters. m - and the exhibition section is only a thousand.

At the top - just in that strange parallelepiped - there is a gallery with natural light, a small cafe and two verandas with a magnificent view of the City. On the second floor there is a small semicircular room with a balcony, from which it would be very convenient to view the media screen on the first floor, but, unfortunately, the height of the balcony does not allow for this.

Nikolai Tarkhov. For embroidery. Early 1910s

© Olga Alekseenko

Valentin Serov. Window. 1887

© Olga Alekseenko

Valery Koshlyakov. Venice. From the series “Postcards”. 2012

© Olga Alekseenko

Nikolai Tarkhov. Mom's room in the morning. 1910

© Olga Alekseenko

Konstantin Yuon. Gate of the Rostov Kremlin. 1906

© Olga Alekseenko

© Olga Alekseenko

Arnold Lakhovsky. Spring. (Black River). Private collection, Moscow.

© Olga Alekseenko

Arnold Lakhovsky. Young Dutch and Breton woman in a blue dress. Private collection, Moscow.

© Olga Alekseenko

On the ground floor there is a lobby and a cloakroom. There are no plans to hold exhibitions here, but contemporary art may continue to appear here, which will be in tune with the main theme of the museum. Now the American media artist Jean-Christophe Couet is responsible for it, who, as an art pathologist, stroke by stroke, reconstructs the process of work of the “Russian impressionists” on canvases from the museum’s collection.

Underground is the largest exhibition hall, with suspended ceilings and renovations reminiscent of regional recreation centers. The clean interiors in McAslan’s sketches of the project look completely different, but in reality they have joints characteristic of domestic construction, benches and lamps are for some reason replaced by black instead of white. Nearby are educational spaces, a training studio and a media center.

© Olga Alekseenko

Regarding the main exhibition, an important note should be made. Whether Russian impressionism exists as a separate movement is more than a controversial issue in art circles. A consensus has been reached regarding individual artists like Korovin, but many of this series managed to work quite a bit in France - and were influenced by the school of light and color that developed in Paris. Some art historians consider what emerged from exercises in the French manner by Russian artists as etudism, some call it Russian landscape painting, others call it a short transitional history from realism to the avant-garde. The museum itself promotes the latter version, but gives it global significance, calling impressionism an inevitable moment in the development of art in any country - as a transitional period from classics to modernity, with “the liberation of the eye and hand.” To strengthen faith in this postulate, they are going to give a course of lectures on alternative impressionism - English, Scandinavian and American.

© Olga Alekseenko

The hall with a permanent exhibition contains works by Serov, Korovin and Kustodiev, which deserve attention and interest in themselves; this also includes Tarkhov’s Renoir paraphrases with his brushstroke in the form of “Parisian vermicelli,” as Leon Bakst called it. There are also stranger exhibits here - for example, among other romantically minded realists for some reason there is Gerasimov, who in Paris experimented with the picturesque style of writing boulevards, perhaps remembering his years of apprenticeship with Korovin. Or a painting by Bogdanov-Belsky, which was officially published in the catalog of the exhibition of the Wanderers. For some of the artists here - like for Konstantin Yuon - impressionism became a fad that quickly passed away in a certain period of time, but it left behind picturesque images of the Rostov Kremlin in the French style.

The second and third floors, the site of a temporary exhibition, are occupied by works by Russian emigration artist Nikolai Lakhovsky, who, according to the curator and director of the museum, “traveled a lot, was very receptive and, when arriving in a new country, slightly adjusted to its mood and style.” Therefore, the works are structured not by chronology, but by geography - on the second floor Venice, France, Belgium, Holland and Palestine, on the top - St. Petersburg and the Russian province with goats.

© Olga Alekseenko

The director and curator of the museum, Yulia Petrova, comments on Lakhovsky’s passion for the color pink and remembers his contemporary, the artist Stanislav Zhukovsky. The latter criticized the dreaminess of Russian impressionists and advised them to “stop painting Russian poetic modest nature in blue and verdigris, and the Russian man in a mulatto from the island of Tahiti; You won’t see them here, no matter how you set yourself up. It doesn’t suit us, just as the top hat doesn’t suit Mayakovsky and the golden lorgnette doesn’t suit Burliuk.”

Whether blue and verdigris suit Russian nature is a philosophical question; in any case, the very idea of ​​creating a museum of Russian impressionism is a rather bold step, given that in Moscow there is no museum of avant-garde or conceptualism, much more undisputed movements. However, there is no separate museum of modern art with a permanent collection. Any private collection reflects the spirit of its era and its interest - and in this regard, the museum meets the needs of the time, in this particular case - the popular love for impressionism. Be that as it may, in the fall the museum’s collection will go on tour, and instead, all three floors will be occupied by works by the contemporary painter Valery Koshlyakov, whom even the curators themselves do not dare classify as impressionism. When asked about the logic of the exhibition, Boris Mints answers that impressionism is planned to be interpreted rather. Reasoning in this paradigm, I would really like to see a museum of Russian melancholy.