Zhostovo. Provocatively Beautiful

About exhibition

The Zhostovo Decorative Painting Factory and the Tsaritsyno State Museum-Reserve present the exhibition “Zhostovo. Provocatively Beautiful,” timed to the 200th anniversary of one of Russia’s most recognizable folk art crafts. The exhibition features more than three hundred items, from rare handicraft pieces of the 19th century to author-made works created in the 21st century. For the first time archival artifacts, experimental samples and objects from collections realized in collaboration with contemporary designers will be shown. The Zhostovo craft will turn two hundred years old in 2025. That date, of course, is conditional: the lacquer painting that arose in the village of Zhostovo may have appeared much earlier or much later. However, the official starting point accepted already in Soviet times is considered to be 1825, when the Vishnyakov brothers opened a workshop in Zhostovo for the production of lacquered metal trays, biscuit boxes, serving trays, jewelry boxes and other decorative items. Unlike their predecessors, they managed to put the craft on a solid foundation and inscribe their names in history. Since then Zhostovo has traveled the path from a cottage industry to a symbol of Russian decorative tradition, preserving a unique artistic school and high painting quality. Today the Zhostovo Factory is a full-cycle enterprise included in the Register of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of Russia. Artists and masters from dynasties where knowledge is passed down from generation to generation work here. The factory’s items are kept in the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery and in private collections around the world. At the exhibition “Zhostovo. Provocatively Beautiful” you can see mid-19th-century trays and avant-garde experiments of the 1920s–30s by artists of the Central Scientific Experimental Station (CNOPS) and the Scientific Research Institute of Art Industry (NIIHP). From the ROSIZO collection come trays painted by artists Boris Grafov, Oleg Gavrilov and Vasily Dyuzhaev. For the first time in Moscow — trays from the private collection of Alexander Bychkov and his unusual gallery in the village of Zhostovo, as well as items from the toy workshop of the Zhostovo factory (painted spatulas, scoops, pails and watering cans) and souvenirs issued for the anniversary of Alexander Pushkin in 1949 or for the 1980 Olympics. In a separate showcase — results of the Zhostovo factory’s collaborations with contemporary Russian designers (for example, with the Radical Chic brand). The curators devoted special attention to the authors: the exhibition includes works by Mikhail Lebedev, the factory’s chief artist, and twenty other masters shaping the craft’s modern face. More than forty items in the exhibition are from the ROSIZO collection, another creative partner of the exhibition. For the opening the museum and the factory prepared a book in which the history of lacquer painting from the 19th century to the present day is told in pictures and in articles by scholars studying this Russian phenomenon. The Tsaritsyno State Museum-Reserve has studied folk art crafts for many years. In 2011 the Bread House hosted the exhibition “Blooming Zhostovo,” in 2022 the Grand Palace opened the exhibition “In Search of Folk Art,” and in 2023 the Tsaritsyno Orangeries presented the project “Not Only Roses,” in which the history of Zhostovo painting was told using seventeen trays. Partners of the exhibition: Zhostovo Decorative Painting Factory Museum and Exhibition Center ROSIZO Exhibition participants: Museum of the Stroganov Art and Industry Academy named after S. G. Stroganov A. S. Pushkin Museum Mytishchi Gallery of Arts Mytishchi Historical and Art Museum Zhostovo Factory Museum State Museum-Reserve “Muranovo Estate” Historical and Art Museum “New Jerusalem” Private collections of Marina and Nikolai Antipov, Larisa Goncharova, Marina Domnikova