Victory Park. Images Of Memory In Russian Contemporary Art

About the exhibition

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art is proud to present an exhibition to mark the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The project also a reflection on the traditions of art remembrance of this event. The most stable (both literally and metaphorically) form of transferring knowledge about the 1941-1945 events are monuments and memorials. They are erected for centuries from durable materials, stone or metal, and become landmarks, symbolically or literally reproducing important events. The famous Soviet monuments like Soldier-Liberator in Treptower Park in Berlin (1949), Motherland Calls! on Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd (1959), Courage in the Brest Fortress in the Republic of Belarus (1971), all became symbols of the Great Patriotic War and the Victory. Focusing on contemporary culture, the museum explores how places and events associated with the War and the Victory have been represented in monumental sculpture over the past four decades.

The starting point for the project was the Victory Park complex on Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow, the first large–scale memorial erected in the post-Soviet Russia. It was here that the entire variety of monuments was designed to be shown: from individual thematic sculptures to large monumental compositions. For the ‘sculpture metapark’ in our exhibition space, we borrow the name of the Poklonnaya Gora complex as both symbolic and festive. The museum’s selection is limited to recognized artists and emerging but prominent sculptors from two capitals, Moscow and St. Petersburg. However, the monuments’ geography is extensive: from Vyazma to Ulan-Ude and Vladivostok, from Voronezh and Kislovodsk to Arkhangelsk.

Each section of the exhibition focuses on one or more monuments which are represented through photographs, texts and other artefacts, sometimes even through their author’s direct speech. Some of the works are selected through the principle of emotional associations: contemporary artists often engage with the themes of memory, family history, loss, honouring and preserving memory. Works by veteran artists Vadim Sidur, Ernst Neizvestny, Nikolai Vechtomov and Yefim Zverkov hold a special place in the exhibition.

Designing our own Victory Park in the museum, the curators tried to highlight different facets of the collective memory about the Great Patriotic War, and as a large memorial complex, our project features images of different nature, scale and tone. Put together, they, like many other artworks before them, continue to remind us of the main things: the grandiose feat of the people, the need to resist oblivion, the Victory and hope for resurgence and continuity of life.

The key exhibits are enhanced by works from the collection of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and from other collections that are associated with the Great Patriotic War and monumental sculpture: the Art Workshops of the Russian Academy of Arts and the Grekov Studio of War Artists. Works from private collections are also included.

The sculptors whose works will be presented at the exhibition are Anatoly Bichukov, Alexander Ignatov, Dmitry Klavsuts, Vyacheslav Klykov, Andrei Kovalchuk, Andrei Korobtsov, Ivan Kulakov, Dashi Namdakov, Konstantin Novikov, Mikhail Pereyaslavets, Alexander Pozin, Alexander Rukavishnikov, Lyudmila Semikopenko, Vadim Sidur, Andrei Smolyaninov, Stanislava Smolyaninova, Denis Stretovich, Evgeny Teterin, Daria Uspenskaya, Zurab Tsereteli, Alexei Chebanenko, Vitaly Shanov, Salavat Shcherbakov.

The exposition will also include works by artists Nikolai Vechtomov, Ernst Neizvestny, Vadim Sidur, Efrem Zverkov, Alexei Parkhomenko, Viktor Dronov, Rostislav Barto, the Kukryniksy, Vladimir Chernetsov, Boris Sukhanov, Alexander Labas, Vera Milyutina, Konstantin Zefirov, Valentin Okorokov, brothers Sergei and Alexei Tkachev, Lilia Evzykova, Evgeny Strulev, Nikolai Andronov, Sergei Kupriyanov, Lyudmila Boguslavskaya, Vladimir Pimenov, Dmitry Nalbandyan, Vasily Nesterenko, Olga Soldatova, Taus Makhacheva, Dmitry Shorin, Nikolai Kunyaev, Olga Volkova and others.