About museum

The Georgy Guryanov Museum Apartment is a unique memorial space dedicated to one of the main representatives of the Russian art scene of the eighties and noughties.

The apartment on Liteyny Street, matching the multifaceted personality of its owner, could take on various guises: a social salon, a photo studio, an artist's workshop, a platform for DJ sets, a repository of valuable works of art, music records and cassettes, and an amazing archive that Guryanov had been collecting for years. All this makes the space of the Museum-Apartment of Georgy Guryanov and his legacy a point of attraction for researchers in the field of art history, musicology, fashion, photography and other fields of culture.

The space of the Museum Apartment is filled with unique exhibits from the legacy of Georgy Guryanov. Among them are the musical instruments of the Kino group: the drum kit featured in the final scene of the cult film Assa, and the legendary white Fender Squier, played by Viktor Tsoi and which has given rise to many mysterious theories about its origin. Georgy Guryanov carefully kept all the materials related to the Kino group: from exclusive photographs to the lyrics of songs recorded by Viktor Tsoi himself.

The museum's collection includes works of art by Georgy Guryanov, made in various techniques and dated from the late 1960s to the second half of the 2000s. Visitors will see completed canvases and pencil sketches, children's drawings, as well as works by other representatives of the St. Petersburg art scene. Georgy Guryanov occupies, perhaps, the first place in terms of the frequency of depiction in the works of “New Artists", as evidenced by valuable works from the collection of the Museum Apartment. In particular, guests will see a rare oil painting by Timur Novikov – a romantic and thoughtful portrait of Guryanov from the 1980s; a stylish portrait of George created by Viktor Tsoi in 1985, which was presented at the exhibition “Brush Stroke" at the Russian Museum.

Exhibits that establish a link between the Leningrad cultural scene and the Western art world deserve special attention. These include posters that artist Keith Haring signed specifically for Georgy Guryanov and Viktor Tsoi after they met in Paris in 1988, and a label from a can of the famous Campbell soup, personally signed by pop art icon Andy Warhol.

In addition, the exhibition of the Apartment Museum includes a DJ console, a music library of strictly selected and artistically decorated vinyl records; photographic equipment with which George captured architectural works and views of the St. Petersburg sky; selected items from the wardrobe and accessories of the main dandy of St. Petersburg, for example, a collection of stylish ties and cufflinks. A separate area will be dedicated to the family of Georgy Guryanov, where visitors will be able to see personal photographs, children's letters, and learn about the early beginnings of Guryanov's dandyism and creative abilities.