Exhibition at the State Tretyakov Gallery

From 14 February to 30 March 2014, at Lavrushinsky Pereulok 12, Engineering Building, 3rd floor, the exhibition "Zinaida Serebryakova.

Paris Period.

Alexander and Ekaterina Serebryakov.

From the collection of the French Fondation Serebriakoff" took place.

The exhibition was prepared for the 130th anniversary of Zinaida Evgenyevna Serebryakova (1884–1967), a painter and draftsman of the “second wave” of Russian World of Art artists and a member of the renowned Benois–Lanceray family.

The exposition is a significant event in the Tretyakov Gallery’s exhibition practice.

Following the presentation of works by other Russian émigré artists, the museum continues its series of exhibitions on the art of the Russian diaspora.

Dramatic events of the early 20th century forced many talented masters to emigrate.

Showing their heritage in Russia is an attempt to create a coherent image of Russian art of the past century.

Serebryakova’s fame at home began to grow after the Tretyakov Gallery purchased her painting "At Her Dressing Table.

Self-Portrait" (1909) in 1910.

More than half of her life, beginning in 1924, she lived in France, and works from that period were long unfamiliar in Russia.

The first large exhibition of her works in the USSR, which included her French works, was held in 1965–66 in Moscow, Kyiv, and Leningrad.

After that exhibition, most of the works brought from Paris were acquired by the country’s major museums.

In particular, the Tretyakov Gallery received a series of superb pastels.

The present exhibition is the first in Russia entirely dedicated to the artist’s period abroad.

Over 70 works by Serebryakova, kept in her Paris studio and never before shown in Russia, are included in the exposition.

Zinaida Serebryakova grew up and developed as an artist in a large family that included architects, painters, sculptors, and art theorists who largely shaped Russian culture, as well as amid her estate’s countryside scenery and in contact with classical heritage she absorbed on trips with her mother and uncle (A.N.

Benois).

Her brief training in private art schools in St.

Petersburg and Paris enriched her skill in working from nature.

A love of 18th–19th century Russian masters and Italian Renaissance artists found its expression in her restrained, laconic style, emphasized by relief forms and sophisticated compositions.

Having begun as a portraitist, Serebryakova soon revealed herself as a master of narrative painting, creating a cycle of epic canvases on rural themes that immortalized the ideal image of the Russian peasant woman.

The tragic events of 1917, the death of her husband, the loss of her family estate at Neskuchnoe, and lack of means forced Serebryakova to leave for France in hopes of earning a living.

What was planned as a temporary trip became permanent emigration.

Only two of her four children — Alexander and Ekaterina — managed to reunite with their mother; the older two — Evgeny and Tatyana — Serebryakova saw again only forty years later.