Exhibition "Art of the 20th Century"

About exhibition

The exhibition is organized around three principles: monographic halls devoted to the work of great artists, collectors' halls, and halls presenting the full diversity of artistic movements of the first third of the 20th century. In the renewed display, to the already familiar monographic halls of Vasily Kandinsky, Ilya Mashkov, and Petr Konchalovsky have been added halls for Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Deineka, as well as Pavel Filonov and his school, Kazimir Malevich and his pupils. The new presentation of works by Marc Chagall includes graphic works and early paintings; for the first time illustrations for Nikolai Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" are being exhibited. For the first time museum visitors have the opportunity to see two of Kazimir Malevich's "Black Squares" simultaneously — in the new exhibition the first version of the famous work, the "Black Suprematist Square" of 1915, is displayed together with a later version from 1929. One of the centers of the new exhibition is the newly opened hall dedicated to the unique collection of Russian avant-garde assembled by Georgy Kostaki. The collector donated most of his collection to the Tretyakov Gallery in 1977. This gift became the largest in the museum's history, and today visitors can fully appreciate its significance. Hall No. 3 features artworks from the 1910s from which the famous Russian avant-garde later emerged. Among them are works by David Burliuk, Iosif Shkolnik, Nikolai Kulbin, Alexander Shevchenko, Robert Falk, and Niko Pirosmani.