Forum exhibition thaw in the Tretyakov Gallery. Exhibition "Thaw" in the Tretyakov Gallery

The exhibition included paintings, sculptures, photographs, film fragments, sets, fabric samples and even a sewing machine. They show the Thaw era as a time of hope, achievement and creative flourishing, as well as problems, conflicts and disappointments.

A new exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery is dedicated to one of the great utopias of the twentieth century, an entire era that lasted about 15 years. About 500 exhibits from 23 museum collections and 11 private collections are collected in two halls on Krymsky Val. These are paintings, graphics, sculpture, decorative and applied arts, household items, photographs, archival documents and film excerpts.

“This exhibition is an example of a calm, serious, system analysis that era from our present time,” said general manager Tretyakov Gallery Zelfir Tregulov. This is an attempt to look at the thaw with its achievements and problems through the eyes of today's youth. It is no coincidence that its curators are young and cannot remember that era.

On the canvases and frames of the tapes, townspeople at the store window, a Volga bumper, a queue to newsstand, caricature abstractionists, behind the glass is a Podolsky sewing machine mechanical plant and a whole collection of fabrics. Exhibition curator Kirill Svetlyakov explained: “In the Thaw era there was no hierarchy. Every type of human activity, not just art, was perceived as creativity.” There is nothing secondary here, each exhibit communicates something important, and the viewer, by collecting these messages, models his own idea of ​​that time.

The exhibition looks like a city: it is built around the so-called Mayakovsky Square - a large white circle with a bust of the poet in the center. “This is a special space - a space designed for meetings, discussions and the most active discussions, expressing one’s opinion. It became the center of an exhibition dedicated to the period when all this became possible and when the main nerve of social, artistic, and intellectual life was in squares, in huge university auditoriums, in research institutes,” Zelfira Tregulova explained the architecture of the exhibition .

The first section of the exhibition, “Conversation with Father,” leads to the “square”—a dialogue between generations in the post-war Soviet world. The conversation is fueled by two topics: the truth about the war and the camps. A silent conversation with the viewer is carried on by Alexander Kryukov’s painting “Auschwitz”, models of the “Broken Ring” memorial by Konstantin Simun and the monument to those killed by bombs created by Vadim Sidur, and a portrait of Varlam Shalamov by Boris Berger. “Modernist language becomes a way of talking about these topics, which were not only forbidden to talk about - yes, it was forbidden - but also difficult to talk about,” said Kirill Svetlyakov.

The second part of the exposition was called “The Best City on Earth.” This is a place where private and public come into contact, where residents have not locked themselves in small apartments or gone into kitchens, as would be the case during the years of stagnation, in the 1970s. Here is the photo “Dawn. Youth at GUM” by Viktor Akhlomov, and etchings by Vladimir Volkov from the series “On the Street”, and the painting “Wedding on Tomorrow Street” by Yuri Pimenov. The latter dedicated housing construction a whole picturesque series “New Areas”.

“International Relations” is the story of the confrontation between the USSR and the USA during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The viewer can see the UN building on a canvas by Yakov Romas, a bronze bust of Fidel Castro created by Nikolai Stamm, a bearded guardsman from the “Cuba” series by artist Viktor Ivanov, a poster for Mikhail Kalatozov’s film “I am Cuba.”

“New Life” illustrates a program for creating a comfortable life. Here are sketches of a collection of clothes for fashionable village women, made by Vyacheslav Zaitsev, cuts of fabric, items from a coffee set. The “Development” exhibits breathe the romance of distant travels and the glorification of everyday work, when young people set off to explore virgin lands, and artists and poets followed them to glorify hard work. This section, for example, includes the paintings “Builders of Bratsk” by Viktor Popkov, “Raftsmen” by Nikolai Andronov and “Constructors” by Ivan Stepanov, and the sculpture “Assemblers” by Yuri Chernov.

The heroes of the Thaw era were students and scientists, to whom the section “Atom - Space” is dedicated. It was the atom and the cosmos, as the smallest and largest quantities, that determined the scale of the universal thinking of the sixties. In addition to the paintings “The Earth is Listening” by Vladimir Nesterov or “Infinity Spiral” by Francisco Infante-Arana, there is a fancy glass wine set that looks like a flask, and a ceramic composition depicting employees of the Institute of Physical Problems and members of the family of Peter Kapitsa, and also a model of a mobile nuclear power plant and a satellite.

Exhibits from the last section “Into Communism!” as if they were hovering above the others: they were located on the second floor, where a ramp leads. Here you can see the large canvas “Requiem” by Eliya Belyutin, Arthur C. Clarke’s table “Contours of the Future” with predictions up to 2100, the satirical cartoon about happiness “The Key”, as well as “I Drew a Little Man”, which tells about the kingdom of lies.

The “thaw” in the Tretyakov Gallery will last until June 11. It should be the first part of an exhibition trilogy. It is planned that it will continue to show art from the era of stagnation, and then from the time of perestroika. “The Thaw” is accompanied by lectures, film screenings, and poetry readings. Poems by Andrei Voznesensky, Evgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akhmadulina, Joseph Brodsky and Gennady Shpalikov will be performed by famous artists. The cycle will open on February 17 by Arthur Smolyaninov, and will close on April 21 by Chulpan Khamatova.

Viewers will be treated to the films “Coach to Vienna” and “Murderers Among Us,” as well as the series of lectures “Breaking Borders,” which will tell about how post-war art developed. And for high school students they prepared an Olympiad dedicated to the art of the 20th century. Part of this program is part of the inter-museum festival “The Thaw: Facing the Future”.

In the May 1954 issue of Znamya magazine, after Stalin’s death, Ilya Erenburg published the story “The Thaw,” which gave its name to an entire era of Soviet post-war history. The period, which lasted only fifteen years, was able to accommodate such important events and phenomena - the rehabilitation of the repressed, the emergence of some freedom of speech, the relative liberalization of social and cultural life, discoveries in the field of space and nuclear energy, an original version of modernism in architecture, which managed to leave quite a noticeable and vivid mark. The then “Khrushchevite” political course and significant transformations taking place in the first post-war decades in the Soviet Union and Europe are still the subject of discussion, close attention of researchers and museum projects today.

Tretyakov Gallery, Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkina, Museum of Moscow teamed up to hold a joint festival "The Thaw: Facing the Future". The trilogy started at the Museum of Moscow at the end of last year with the exhibition “Moscow Thaw”. Now with the project "Thaw" The Tretyakov Gallery joins the festival.

The exhibition, including works by Eric Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov, Yuri Pimenov, Viktor Popkov, Geliy Korzhev, Ernst Neizvestny, Vladimir Sidur, Tahir Salakhov, Oscar Rabin, Anatoly Zverev and many other artists and sculptors - witnesses of the era, will be divided into seven thematic sections, illustrating the “thaw” phenomenon itself: "Conversation with Father"- about the dialogue of generations in post-war Soviet society, "The best city on Earth"- about the city as a place of contact between private and public life, "International Relations"- about the confrontation between the USSR and the USA, the Cold War and the threat of nuclear destruction, "New life"- about improving the world of Soviet people with the help of everyday objects, "Development"- about the “romance of distant travels”; "Atom - space" And "To communism!" will complete the exhibition opening in the halls on Krymsky Val.

Yu. I. Pimenov
"Run across the street"
1963
Kursk State art gallery them. A.A. Deineki

V. B. Yankilevsky
"Composition"
1961

T. T. Salakhov
"At the Caspian Sea"
1966
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

T. T. Salakhov
"Gladioli"
1959
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

E. V. Bulatov
"Cut"
1965–1966
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

V. E. Popkov
"Two"
1966
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

On Thursday, February 16, the Tretyakov Gallery opened the “Thaw” exhibition. The exhibition, prepared with the participation of dozens of museums, research institutes, private collections and running until June 11, makes you think not only about the era of the 1950-1960s, but above all about the time in which we live.

The question is why suddenly, on the centenary of the collapse of the empire, there are three important cultural institutions of the capital at once - the Museum of Moscow, where the exhibition “Moscow Thaw” opened in December last year, the Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin (there a project on this topic starts in March) - they guessed large-scale exhibitions about the thaw, hanging in the air. But many questions generally arise here, and this is in tune with the era that came after Stalin’s death: for the first time in the country, a time has come that is conducive to the search for meaning. Fear ceased to be the defining background in the lives of Soviet people. Having ended quickly, the most free and fruitful period in the history of the USSR nevertheless gave rise to worthy fruits: perestroika was started by those who grew up and were formed during the thaw years. And even the differences in assessments of the current exhibition - it can perhaps be considered too blissful - remind us: the thaw is the time to ask questions and look for a variety of answers to them.

From Tyutchev to Ehrenburg

We are accustomed to thank Ilya Ehrenburg for the historical term “thaw” - that’s what he called his story, published in 1954 in the magazine “Znamya”. But in the article about “thaw” literature written for the exhibition catalog (this book, representing detailed analysis thaw, revealing its intrigues and conflicts, is worthy of separate study), another author emerges -. His poem “The Thaw” was written back in 1948, when the poet returned from the camps and exile. Fyodor Tyutchev was the first to use this word to define the political climate - after the death of Nicholas I. This fact makes us think about the inevitable change of seasons not only in nature, but also in society, and look for traces of unprecedented cold in the halls of the Tretyakov Gallery, after which came a thaw. But there are almost none here.

Abstraction and parody

In the first section, presenting a dialogue between young sixties with the generation of parents - the curators of the exhibition (the head of the department of new trends at the Tretyakov Gallery and his colleagues Yulia Vorotyntseva and Anastasia Kurlyandtseva) called it “A Conversation with Father” - there are two topics for reflection: the truth about the war and Stalin's repressions. The memory of the repressions was fresh then - the survivors had just been released, mass rehabilitation was underway: for the first time in Russian history, the authorities admitted that they were wrong.

The theme of repression is illustrated by “Portrait of a Father” by Pavel Nikonov - the white officer Fyodor Nikonov spent ten years in exile in Karaganda. But the viewer, without finding an annotation for the picture, will probably think that the father came from the war. There is also a tempera by Igor Obrosov, which refers to 1937, and a portrait by Birger (I introduced him to the writer). The curators are worried that the Thaw artists hardly touched on the theme of Stalin's terror, so the visual range is limited. One can argue with them: there are, for example, prison drawings by Hulo Sooster (his pictorial “Egg” is present in another section of the exhibition). You can also recall the painting of the executed man - Muscovites saw it in 1962 at an exhibition in Manege for the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists, the same one where Khrushchev cursed nonconformists, and the merit, in particular, of Pavel Nikonov was that repressed and forgotten artists were generally shown there . This story apparently does not fit into the concept of a light and pleasant thaw as it was shown to us.

Nikonov and Geliy Korzhev hang next to each other - but are they both heroes? It was at the exhibition in Manege that a watershed took place: Korzhev spoke out against the “formalists” and independent artists, Nikonov was in favor. But we learn about the Manezh exhibition here only thanks to the participation in the historical exhibition of the abstract artist Eliya Belutin’s studio - meanwhile, in the Manege then they were exhibited for the first time. Yes, their works also participate in the current “Thaw” - along with canvases by Belyutin’s students and representatives of the harsh style - Geliy Korzhev,. Abstractions by Nemukhin and Zverev, Vechtomov and Turetsky, works by Oscar Rabin and Lydia Masterkova, sculptures by Sidur, Neizvestny, Silis are shown in the same space with a giant triptych by the socialist realist Reshetnikov - a caricature of Western abstractionists. The fact that these things are placed on equal terms, side by side, can give the uninitiated viewer - and does create - the erroneous impression that both were exhibited during the Thaw years. But it was not like that at all.

Before it gets cold

In essence, what we see in the halls on Krymsky Val is a digest of the era, another version of the defunct program “Namedni”, a cross-section of a specific time layer: how did contemporaries live, where did they work, what discoveries and victories did they make... Such a view, of course, has the right to exist. It is clear that victories here are more important than defeats - the country lived from good to better: “Cuba is nearby”, great scientific discoveries, interior design of spaceships, touching paintings by Academician Blokhintsev, Romm’s best-selling film “Nine Days of One Year” (thaw films are hardly represented at the exhibition no more complete than fine art).

Image: State Tretyakov Gallery

The genre also determined the structure. Starting from the dramatic “Conversation with Father”, we find ourselves in “The Best City on Earth”, from there we move on to “International Relations” or find ourselves in “New Life”. Then “Development”, “Atom - Space”, “To communism!” Gagarin is again our only everything.

In the center of the exhibition, the architect Plotnikov built a conventional Mayakovsky square, which provokes thoughts about poets and poetry (the sculptural portrait of the work cannot be missed). There's a lot of really great art here. The Tretyakov Gallery won the battle against Pushkinsky for Yuri Zlotnikov’s “Geiger Counter” (Yuri Savelyevich, who died a few months ago, did not live to see this moment - meanwhile, there are several of his things on display). There is also a “red corner” - a fence with works of kinetic artists hung on dark walls: Lev Nusberg, Raisa Sapgir, Francisco Infante. But it seems that there are more photographs than canvases. Happiness is in the air. The transcripts of the meetings of the Writers' Union, which condemned Pasternak and Sinyavsky with Daniel, do not disturb the romantic picture. Rain on canvases

We know how the thaw will end. The graceful form in which the curators presented the finale of a happy era cannot but be appreciated. This is a giant painting by the Karelian artist Nieminen “Tyazhbummashevtsy”: workers during a lunch break or a smoke break, one of them with a newspaper in his hands. The date is clearly visible in the corner of the newspaper sheet: August 23, 1968. The day when Soviet troops entered Prague. The second title of the picture is “Tanks 1968”. The thaw froze.

But it didn't end. The topic requires continuation. It cannot be considered closed, if only because, as has already been said, another study on the thaw theme awaits us - the exhibition “Facing the Future”, dedicated to European art of 1945-1968. The project, prepared by independent Berlin curator Eckhart Gillen, the famous Viennese actionist, and today the head of the Center for Art and Media Technologies in Karlsruhe, Peter Weibel and Danila Bulatov from the Pushkin Museum, has been traveling around Europe for six months. It will open at the Pushkin Museum in March. Independent Soviet art will be presented there as part of European art - this will be another look at our thaw. From afar.

As you know, every presentation begins with a free buffet, where there is something to drink and snack.

The exhibition was visited by high authorities. Here Olga Golodets is with the director of the State Tretyakov Gallery Zelfira Tregulova and a representative of Russian Railways.

A few words before the ceremonial cutting of the red ribbon.

Organizers, patrons and sponsors of the exhibition are on the improvised stage.

The guests listen carefully. Among them, professor of Moscow State University and Stroganovka Vladimir Borisovich Koshaev was noticed.

The first section of the exhibition "Conversation with Father". The tense dialogue between generations in post-war Soviet society was fueled by two topics that many preferred to remain silent about: the truth about the war and the truth about the camps. The history of the Thaw is the history of rehabilitation processes that began immediately after the death of I.V. Stalin.

The next section is “The Best City on Earth”. The city in the Thaw era is the main “scene of action”, the place of contact between the private and public spheres: the inhabitants of this city have not yet locked themselves in small apartments in front of the TV, have not gone into the kitchen (as would happen in the 1970s), and the city fulfills They function as a public forum or “big house” - a space for feasts in the courtyard, dancing and reading poetry in squares and parks.

Next - "International Relations". The confrontation between the USSR and the USA determined the political picture of the world in the second half of the 20th century. Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation had a decisive influence on the cultural thinking of this time. The two superpowers competed not only in the arms race, but also in promoting their way of life on international exhibitions and in means mass media.

Festival:

Next - "New Life". The promise to provide each family with separate housing that meets the requirements of hygiene and cultural life was enshrined in new program party of 1961. The society, which in 20 years was supposed to live under communism, had as one of its main goals the creation of a comfortable private life. The slogan of the 1920s, “The artist goes to production,” has regained relevance: the world of Soviet people must be improved with the help of the everyday environment, and artist-designers need to educate citizens in the “correct” taste as opposed to “philistinism.”

The organizers called the open space in the center of the exhibition Mayakovsky Square.

Section "Atom - space". Atom and space - as the smallest and largest quantities - determine the range of thinking of the sixties, looking to the future, which will come tomorrow. Massovization higher education and the development of scientific institutions give rise to new heroes of the time - students and scientists. Since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, space has captured minds and become one of the main themes in Soviet culture, affecting not only paintings or poetry, but also the design of household objects and appliances.

Employees of the Institute of Physical Problems are members of the Kapitsa family:

Section "Mastering". The propaganda campaign that accompanied the development of virgin lands exploited the “romance of distant travels” and the desire for self-affirmation and independence. Development was also associated with the idea of ​​“massification” of the heroism of hard “workdays” at all latitudes of the Soviet Union, at large-scale construction sites, on the virgin lands of Kazakhstan, in the forests of the Urals and Siberia. Artists and poets went on creative trips to construction sites and virgin lands to capture the “young romantics.”

The final section "Into communism!" In 1961, at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, in his speech N.S. Khrushchev promised that “the current generation of Soviet people will live under communism.” Advances in space exploration and new scientific discoveries stimulated the imagination, and in the culture of the 1960s one can find many futuristic predictions similar to those made during the first revolutionary decade. The ideas of robotization of production processes were partially implemented in practice, and this made it possible to think that people of the near communist future would be able to afford to engage only in self-improvement and creativity in a variety of areas.

With communism, I didn’t quite understand what the organizers wanted to say. Apparently the exhibition requires a more careful and thoughtful reading.
Several general, panoramic views:

Time to go:

Large-scale exhibition project on Krymsky Val will combine paintings and drawings, sculptures, household items, design samples, video projections with fragments of feature films and documentary footage of the “Thaw Era” into a single installation

State Tretyakov Gallery
February 16 - June 11, 2017
Moscow, Krymsky Val, 10, halls 60–61

The “Era of Thaw” in Russian history is usually called the period from 1953 (from the time of the first amnesties after Stalin’s death) to August 1968 - the date of the introduction of Soviet tanks into Czechoslovakia, which dispelled illusions about the possibility of building socialism with a “human face”. The “Thaw” became the most important political, social and cultural project in the history of the USSR, one of the “great utopias” of the 20th century, carried out simultaneously with cultural revolutions and democratic transformations in Western Europe and the USA.

It is no coincidence that such a relatively short period of time (only about 15 years) is called an era. Density of time, its saturation the most important events were incredibly tall. The weakening of state control and the democratization of cultural management have significantly revitalized creative processes. The Thaw style was formed, which is an original version of Soviet modernism of the 1960s. In many ways, it was stimulated by scientific achievements in the field of space and nuclear energy. Space and the atom - as the largest and smallest quantities - determined the range of “universal” thinking of the sixties, looking into the future.

The pervasive feeling of something great and new being created literally before our eyes could not help but be reflected in art. All participants in the creative process worked to find a new language that could express time. Literature was the first to react to the changing situation. The rehabilitation of some cultural figures repressed under Stalin was of great importance. Soviet readers and viewers rediscovered many names that were taboo in the 1930s and 40s. IN fine arts a “severe style” appeared. At the same time, some artists turned to the heritage of the Russian avant-garde, and active searches began in the field of non-figurative representation. Architecture and design received a new impetus for development.

This exhibition presents the curatorial interpretation of the processes taking place in culture and society. The goal of the project is not only to show the achievements of the Thaw, to demonstrate the explosion of incredible creative activity that the new freedom gave, but also to name the problems and conflicts of the era. The exhibition includes works by artists, sculptors, and directors who witnessed changes in the most important areas of the life of Soviet people. Their opinions are polemical on a number of issues, which makes the exhibition voluminous and polyphonic.

The exhibition is a single installation into which various artifacts are integrated: works of painting and graphics, sculpture, household items, design samples, video projections with fragments of feature films and documentary footage. The exhibition space is divided into seven thematic sections demonstrating the most important phenomena of the era.

The section “Conversation with Father” examines the dialogue between generations in post-war Soviet society. It was supported by two topics about which it was customary to remain silent: the truth about the war and the truth about the camps.

The section “The Best City on Earth” reveals the theme of the city as a place of contact between the private and public spheres, when residents have not yet locked themselves in small apartments in front of the TV or retreated to the kitchens, as would happen in the 1970s.

The section “International Relations” examines the confrontation between the USSR and the USA, which determined the political picture of the world in the second half of the twentieth century. The Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation had a decisive influence on the cultural thinking of this time. The two superpowers competed not only in the arms race, but also in promoting their way of life at international exhibitions and in the media.

“New Life” illustrates the program for creating a comfortable private life, when the slogan of the 1920s, “Artist to Production,” regained relevance. Artist-designers were given the task of instilling in citizens the “correct” taste as opposed to “philistinism”, and improving the world of Soviet people with the help of the everyday environment.

“Development” offers a conversation about the “romance of distant wanderings”, about the desire of young people for self-affirmation and independence, about the glorification of difficult “workdays”, that is, on those topics that were used in propaganda campaigns that accompanied the development of virgin lands, calls for distant construction sites . Artists and poets went on creative trips to capture young romantics.

“Atom - Space” demonstrates how the mass character of higher education and the development of scientific institutions gave birth to new heroes of the time - students and scientists. Since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, space has captured the minds and become one of the main themes in Soviet culture, affecting not only paintings or poetry, but also the design of household objects and appliances.

In the section “To communism!” It becomes clear how advances in space exploration and scientific discoveries have stimulated the imagination of artists. In the culture of the 1960s one can find many futuristic forecasts similar to those made during the first revolutionary decade.

The Thaw era was full of contradictions. The exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery represents an attempt at a systematic study of its cultural heritage. It is planned that the project will become the first part of an exhibition trilogy, which will be continued by showing art from the 1970s - the first half of the 1980s, the so-called era of stagnation, and after that - the time of perestroika.

A unique publication dedicated to the Soviet era of the 1950s–60s has been prepared for the exhibition. The book contains scientific articles about painting, sculpture, architecture, design, fashion, cinema, theater, poetry, literature, it also examines issues of sociology, political science and philosophy of this time.

The project is accompanied by extensive educational program, including lectures, film screenings, poetry readings, and an Olympiad for schoolchildren. Part of the program is organized as part of the inter-museum festival “Thaw. Facing the future."

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