Nalbandyan Studio Museum

Dmitry Nalbandyan, an artist, winner of two Stalin Prizes, academician and a prominent representative of the post-war Russian elite, was given a spacious space for his creative studio on the ninth floor of a residential building at 8/2 Tverskaya Street in Moscow in 1956. The workshop was not only a space for the creation of numerous works, but also a meeting place for artists and intellectuals, public and political figures.

The Museum-Studio opened its doors in November 1992 as a “Workshop of the People's Artist Dmitry Nalbandyan”, which was created as a structural subdivision of the Manege Central Exhibition Hall by the decree of the Moscow City Government. On 16 June 1993, less than a month before his death, Dmitry Nalbandyan donated 36 of his paintings to the city. It was these works that became the basis of the first permanent exposition of the museum. Later, thanks to the active participation of the artist's family, the collection was enriched with graphic works, paintings, decorative and applied art collectibles, printed publications and photographs. Since 2018, the Museum-Studio of Dmitry Nalbandyan has been a part of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.

The space of the museum-studio consists of three exhibition halls: painting, graphics and a “memorial” room. The painting hall presents landscapes and still lifes, as well as the works Komsomolka Terikhova (1934), Portrait of Test Pilot Georgy Mosolov (1966), Vladimir Ilyich and Felix Dzerzhinsky (1988), as well as a number of sketches for the author's monumental paintings: Nikolay Bauman's Funeral (1955), Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's Speech on Red Square in 1919 (1956) and many others. The hall of graphics shows a collection of sketches, drawings and travelling albums of the artist during his foreign trips to India, Italy and France, as well as a gallery of the first persons of politics and art of the Soviet period. A series of photographs from Nalbandyan's personal archive is given special attention.

The museum-studio is to be reconstructed. The new permanent exposition of the museum will be built on the dialogue of the previous era and current culture, presenting the Soviet experience with exceptional historical significance. An integral part of the exposition, along with paintings and graphics by Dmitry Nalbandyan, will be archival materials and historical chronicles, which will connect various aspects of the artist's creative biography and historical events.