1.Юрий Купер. Море. 2010 2.Юрий Купер. Ложка осторожно. 1991 3.Юрий Купер. Кисть. 2008 4.Юрий Купер. Зимний Петербург. 2010 5.Юрий Купер. Коробка. 1991 6 Юрий Купер. Эскиз костюмов к опере Ж.Бизе "Кармен". Кармен. 2008 7.Юрий Купер. Ящик, 1990 8 Юрий Купер. Красный стул. 2008 9 Юрий Купер. Тюбик на ткани. 1982

Curated by Katerina Zaitseva

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art together with the Sfumato studio is happy to present a solo exhibition of Yuri Kuper, an internationally acknowledged artist. The exhibition is arranged as a journey into the author’s world and demonstrates the full range of Kuper’s creative personas: painter, graphic artist, sculptor, designer, and theater artist.
The title of the exhibition Monochrome expresses the philosophy of the artist, who appreciates the subtlety of images and muffles the sound of the colors. They should not distract from the meaning of the painted objects. The artist’s works are similar to old photographs. His images convey the illusion of reality, just as photographs. At the same time, they have a special aura of time and the palpable breath of the past.
Yuri Kuper is known as the author of exquisite still life with the simplest things: the tools of painting and carpentry, a chair, an apple, a flower, and a blade of grass. All these objects, carefully examined and painstakingly portrayed on the canvas, are heroes of the author’s distinctive aesthetic universe. The author claims that his world has «the ideal proportion of poverty and shabby luxury».
At the entrance, the viewer will see a photographic reconstruction of the digital projection Front Door. It introduces an old house that has lost its noble owners and has been given over to communal life. The image of the «communal apartment» is one of the author’s paradoxically happy memories and the source of a unique perspective on things, a special visuality of Kuper’s paintings with their silvery-smoky coloring.
The exhibition will feature paintings and graphic works of the author from different years, including works from the 1990s that are stored in the funds of MMOMA. Sculpture, objects, collages and author’s books of the artist are also on display.
For the first time ever the art of Yuri Kuper can be seen in such its entirety — the exposition space of the mansion at Gogolevsky Boulevard is best suited for large-scale and aesthetically perfect works of the master, which will be housed in thirteen halls of the MMOMA.
About the artist:
Yuri Kuper is an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts and a member of the Union of Artists. He was born July 5, 1940 in Moscow. In 1963 he graduated from the Fine Art Department of the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. The artist’s works are kept in the largest museum collections in the world, including the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Royal Museum of Japan. Kuper’s artworks are part of the collections of the French Ministry of Culture, the U. S. Library of Congress, the Sainsbury’s Foundation in Britain, and many others. Yuri Kuper has designed more than 20 productions in theaters in Russia, France, Italy and the USA, and continues to work in theater and cinema. The artist is also an active participant of the contemporary art process, with more than 100 of his solo exhibitions held in museums and galleries around the world.

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