Art News

The Art Museum of Estonia Shows Pavel Filonov and the Russian Avant-Garde

artwork: Pavel Filonov - "Feast of Kings", 1912–1913 - Oil on canvas - 175 x 215 cm. © State Russian Museum. - On view at the Art Museum of Estonia in "Pavel Filonov and the Russian Avant-Garde' until September 18th.


Tallinn, Estonia.- The Art Museum of Estonia is proud to present “Pavel Filonov and the Russian Avant-Garde’, on view in the Kumu museum’s great hall until September 18th. The exhibition Pavel Filonov. The Russian Avant-Garde and Afterwards is based on the collections of the State Russian Museum. In addition to Filonov’s oeuvre, the display includes works of art by the representatives of other trends in the Russian avant-garde, as well as examples of social realism. The exhibition is accompanied by a wonderfully illustrated catalogue in Estonian, Russian and English.

“The exhibition focuses on the work of Pavel Filonov, one of the most exceptional and unique masters of the Russian avant-garde in the first half of the 20th century, in a wider context,” says the coordinator of the exhibition Elnara Taidre. “Filonov can be compared to the key figures of the Russian avant-garde, Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich; his uniqueness, however, is visible in the synthesis of the legacy of the Academy and a new art language.” The display has been compiled in cooperation with the State Russian Museum, whose collections hold the majority of Filonov’s legacy, and the best part of the Russian avant-garde. “I am extremely pleased that this first major cooperation project with the State Russian Museum after the regaining of independence has been realised,” said Anu Liivak, the director of Kumu. “I visited the first retrospective of Filonov at the State Russian Museum about 25 years ago, and ever since I have dreamt of a chance to introduce his work in Estonia. Filonov lived in an interesting, but difficult time. The exhibition offers museum-goers a unique opportunity to experience this controversial and tragic era through contemporary works of art.”

Filonov’s works on display at Kumu include the significant paintings “Feast of Kings” and “Formula of Spring”, as well as works from the series Formulae and Heads. A general context is created with the works of the Russian avant-garde masters Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky and Natalia Goncharova, which are supplemented by the paintings of several other interesting artists, such as David Burliuk, Mikhail Matyushin and Pavel Filonov’s pupils. As a contrast to experimental art, works that are part of the anti-innovation canon of social realism will be on display, including the oeuvre of Stalin’s court artist Isaac Brodsky, and the huge collective painting by Yuri Kugach, Wassily Nechitailo and Viktor Tsyplakov entitled Glory to the Great Stalin! (3.5 × 5.25 m). The artist, art theorist and creator of the system of analytical art Pavel Filonov (1882/1883–1941) examined in his oeuvre the invisible processes in visible things in an attempt to show the structure of living matter to the observer.

artwork: Pavel Filonov - Untitled, 1940, Allegorical painting Oil on cardboard - On loan State Russian Museum St. Petersburg, RussiaIn 1925, he founded the group “Masters of Analytical Art”. Filonov, his family and students were persecuted because he never became a supporter of social realism, and his works were not allowed to be exhibited until the perestroika era. The artist was “rediscovered” in Russia and in the West in the 1980s. Nowadays, he is considered a classic of 20th-century art, and his works are exhibited all over the world.

The Art Museum of Estonia was founded on November 17th, 1919, but it was not until 1921 that it got its first permanent building – the Kadriorg Palace, built in the 18th century. In 1929 the palace was expropriated from the Art Museum in order to rebuild it as the residence of the President of Estonia. The Art Museum of Estonia was housed in several different temporary spaces, until it moved back to the palace in 1946. In September, 1991 the Kadriorg Palace was closed, because it had totally deteriorated by then. At the end of the year the Supreme Council of the Republic of Estonia decided to guarantee the construction of a new building for the Art Museum of Estonia in Kadriorg. Until then the Knighthood House at Toompea Hill served as the temporary main building of the Art Museum of Estonia. The exhibition there was opened on April 1, 1993. Art Museum of Estonia premanently closed down the exhibitions in that building in October 2005. At the end of the 1970s and the 1980s the first branches of the Art Museum of Estonia were founded. Starting from 1995 all the branches offered different educational programmes for children and young people.  In summer 2000 the restored Kadriorg Palace was opened, but not as the main building of the Art Museum of Estonia, but as a branch. Kadriorg Art Museum now exhibits the foreign art collection of the Art Museum of Estonia. At present there are five active branches of the Art Museum of Estonia: Kadriorg Art Museum (Kadriorg Palace and Mikkel Museum), Niguliste Museum, Adamson-Eric Museum, and Kumu Art Museum (the new main building of the Art Museum of Estonia). For the first time during its nearly 100-year-old history, the Art Museum of Estonia has a building that both meets the museum’s requirements and is worthy of  Estonian art in its collections. Kumu Art Museum is a multifunctional art museum that includes exhibition halls, an auditorium that offers diverse possibilities, and an education centre for children and art lovers of all ages. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.ekm.ee