Collection
The MMOMA collection is the heart of the museum and its various activities. Designed to reflect the diversity of genres and forms of contemporary art in Russia, the collection currently holds more than 10,000 exhibits. Its chronological range expands from the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, the emergence of the Modernist art practices in Russia, up to the present day, covering a large, complex, and eventful period in the history of our country.
MMOMA started with Zurab Tsereteli's private collection. With the support of the Moscow Department of Culture and donations from artists, their heirs and collectors, the museum regularly acquires new works. Today, the Museum's collection of Russian art of the 20th and 21st centuries can rightfully be considered one of the most comprehensive in the world.
Having deliberately abandoned the idea of constructing a single narrative, MMOMA strives to create a most exhaustive and multidimensional panorama of the modern art process.
THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY
The art of the first half of the 20th century is represented by works of leading Russian avant-garde artists.
The collection also features remarkable works by artists from the first wave of Russian emigration which is unique for Russian state collections. Many of these works were purchased in Europe and the USA, and literally returned to their homeland.
The Museum's collection contains works by representatives of various art movements of the 1920s, i.e., Socialist realism, Soviet impressionism, as well as masters of the so-called 'quiet art' of the 1930s-1950s.
THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY
The collection of the second half of the XX century reflects the split of the Soviet art culture, which was balancing between two poles: the official line of the Union of Artists and underground practices. It includes works by members of the reassembled Academy, representatives of the 'rough style' and 'left Moscow Union of Artists', artists of the seventies, works by nonconformists, conceptualists, and representatives of Sots Art.
An extensive independent group is formed by the works of artists associated with the traditions of naive and primitivist art.
END OF THE 20TH — BEGINNING OF THE 21ST CENTURY
A strategically important role in the MMOMA collection is assigned to the section of current artistic practices. In an effort to maintain, preserve and popularize contemporary culture, the museum aims to build a truly representative collection of today's Russian art from different regions of the country.
The MMOMA collection showcases a wide range of artistic trends and individual creative statements over the past thirty-odd years, from the generation of experimenters of the late 1980s to young artists who emerged recently, and includes works in a variety of techniques: from traditional painting, graphics and sculpture to video and multimedia installations.
FOREIGN ARTISTS
The works of foreign artists, representatives of classical European modernism of the first half of the 20th century and the global art of the 1960s-2010s, form a separate, relatively small, but noteworthy, segment of the MMOMA collection.
INDIVIDUAL SECTIONS
A characteristic feature of the MMOMA collection are individual (monographic) sections of both already established and emerging artists.
The artists represented in the museum collections with a significant and diverse body of their works include: the influential neo-academic, painter, graphic artist and teacher Vasily Shukhaev; self-taught artists Niko Pirosmani and Pavel Leonov; artists of Russian emigration Boris Anisfeld and David Burlyuk; master of 'quiet art' Konstantin Zefirov; representatives of various movements of the second half of the XX century: Nikolai Andronov, Vyacheslav Koleychuk, Francisco Infante, Eduard Steinberg, Igor Makarevich, Dmitry Prigov, Leonid Borisov, Boris Orlov, Igor Shelkovsky; sculptors Alexey Grigoriev and Alexander Sokolov; major contemporary artists Irina Nakhova, Sergey Shutov, Aidan Salakhova, Vitaly Pushnitsky, Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Aladdin Harunov, Andrey Bartenev, Nikolai Nasedkin, Chaim Sokol, Anna Zhelud, Irina Korina, among others.
