The recently acquired Gruen collection exemplifies the wide range of subjects, styles, and approaches of important contemporary Russian artists who had far-reaching impact on the development of modernist art in the former Soviet Union. The presentation of the Gruen collection’s initial gift to the museum includes five works by the major Moscow artists Ilya Kabakov, Vladimir Nemukhin, Eduard Shteinberg, and Vladimir Yakovlev, as well as one work by Andrei Khlobystin, a St. Petersburg artist and art critic of the younger generation.

 

Ilya Kabakov, one of the most prominent Russian conceptual artists on the international scene, is represented by two lithographs, Encounter with an Angel and How Can One Change Oneself These works exemplify one of the most important genres for Kabakov—the picture with a text. Kabakov’s text-and-image and found-object works often combine elements of literature, art, and Soviet postwar mass culture. Raised in a world of totalitarian slogans, Kabakov deconstructs the codes of Soviet society, looking at that culture through the eyes of a detached outsider. 

A first-generation Moscow nonconformist, Vladimir Nemukhin is best known for the mixed media collages that he began to create in 1963. As with many of Nemukhin’s works, the 1989 pastel with collage from the Gruen collection incorporates actual playing cards, which for Nemukhin evoke the “game of life,” alluding to riddles, chance, and fate.  

In the 1960s, Eduard Shteinberg created metaphysical compositions inspired by aesthetic ideas from Russian philosophy. Early in that decade, Shteinberg’s life and work were also affected by the death of a close friend, after which death and funereal imagery became prevalent in his work. In his paintings of this period, Shteinberg often depicts a female figure, reduced to an archetype and reminiscent of the shrouded Virgin Mary.

 

These and works by the other artists mentioned above will be featured in this exhibition before they are incorporated into our permanent collection galleries.