Now, for the first time, a major exhibition being dedicated to the mani-fold forms of Impressionism in Russia. The show, which is a cooperation with the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and Museum Barberini in Potsdam, demonstrates the internationality of pictorial languages around 1900 and integrates the Russian artists into the project of European artistic modernity. The sojourns of artists in Paris, the capital of European art, left deep traces in Russian painting. The generation that came after Ilia Repin looked to the West. The boulevards and cafés of Paris were an important motif around 1900. The painters studied not just the architec-ture but also the Impressionist street scenes with their dramatic street-scapes and daring perspectives. The streets lit up at night fascinated Konstantin Korovin und Nicolas Tarkhoff, who made the subject popular.
On their return to Russia, they put their impressions of French modernity into practice: they painted outdoors and turned their canvasses into stages for the light. This provided important stimuli for landscape paint-ing, which became a field of experimentation for artists such as Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova and Kazimir Malevich. They saw themselves as Impressionists before they founded expressive Rayonism and non-representational Suprematism after 1910.
The study of light outdoors also affected their portrayal of indoor set-tings. Now, they painted rooms made worthy of portrayal by views seen through windows of illuminated by light coming in from outside. While the interiors of French painters such as Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet did without sunlight entirely, Russian painters like Stanislav Zhukovsky and Valentin Serov explored Impressionist light effects indoors. Decid-edly Impressionist themes such as strolls through bucolic meadows or still lifes of flowers or fruit were added to the palette of Russian art by painters such as Ilia Repin, Igor Grabar and Alexej von Jawlensky
The exhibition also addresses how painters such as Nicolas Tarkhoff or David Burlyuk turned Impressionist practice – in a manner comparable with the Neoimpressionists in France and the Expressionists in Germany – into a surface-like style of painting in expressive, strong colors. Final-ly, the exhibition shows works that transformed Impressionist painting of light into the abstract light allegories the Russian avant-garde prior to World War I.
The decision to bring this exhibition to Baden-Baden, which has been a popular destination and meeting place for artists, musicians and writers from Russia since the time of the Impressionists and through the writ-ings of Turgenev and Dostoevski, was made by Frieder Burda himself. The exhibition is dedicated to his memory.
Curators: Ortrud Westheider & Alla Chilova
