Description of the attraction
The Zurab Tsereteli Art Gallery (Moscow Museum of Modern Art) is the first municipal state museum in Russia, which contains works of art of the 20th and 21st centuries. The museum was opened in December 1999 with the assistance of the Moscow City Government and the City Department of Culture. The founder and director of the gallery was Zurab Tsereteli, president of the Russian Academy of Arts.
The collection of works of art began with the personal collection of Zurab Tsereteli, numbering more than 2,000 works by artists who worked in the 20th century. Later, the funds were replenished with new works that were purchased or donated to the gallery.
Currently, the museum has five exhibition rooms located in the center of Moscow. The main building of the complex, which houses a permanent exhibition and regularly hosts exhibitions, is located at ul. Petrovka, in a former mansion owned by the merchant Gubin. The building is an architectural monument of the late 18th century. The author of the project was the architect Matvey Kazakov. In Soviet times, the building was badly dilapidated and needed a thorough restoration. Today's visitors can see the unique classic-style murals that cover the mansion's ceilings. The atmosphere of Moscow antiquity is created by a ballroom with an orchestra niche, a grand staircase and ceramic ovens. The mansion, adapted for a modern gallery, combines old and new forms, different epochs coexist, which opens up opportunities for artists and spectators of self-determination in the space of modern culture.
The museum has two more exhibition buildings at its disposal: in Ermolaevsky lane and on Tverskoy boulevard. The gallery also holds exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Russian Academy of Arts on Gogolevsky Boulevard.
The gallery of Zurab Tsereteli presents a collection of works by the classics of the Russian avant-garde. These are works of the early twentieth century by artists Wassily Kandinsky, Pavel Filonov, Marc Chagall, Kazimir Malevich, Aristarkh Lentulov, Natalia Goncharova, Alexandra Exter, Vladimir Tatlin, etc. The gallery presents a unique collection of works by the Georgian primitivist artist Niko Pirosmani.
A large section of the exposition is devoted to the work of non-conformist artists of the 1960s-1980s. There are paintings by masters who were “underground” in those years, but now their names are widely known at home and abroad. These are the works of Ilya Kabakov, Vladimir Nemukhin, Anatoly Zverev, Vitaly Komar and others.
The gallery supports contemporary art. Her collection is constantly updated with new works. The collection includes works by such artists as Dmitry Prigov, Oleg Kulik, Viktor Pivovarov, Andrei Bartenev, Alexander Brodsky and others.
