Modern in the Russian Icon

The Art Nouveau style spread in the last decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in various countries, including Russia, where it reached its maturity by the 1900s. Initially it was formed as an elitist style in secular art, but gradually its aesthetics penetrated into Orthodox artistic culture as well. The time of the predominance of Russian Art Nouveau in religious art was short-lived, but so vivid that disputes about this phenomenon are still going on. The task of the project is to present a variety of monuments created in the Art Nouveau style (icons, icon cases, hinges, censers, etc.) and to identify their unifying stylistic features and formal techniques. Among the exhibits is a little-known work by V. Vasnetsov, works by M. Nesterov and one of the most prominent Moscow icon painters of the early 20th century, A. Ya. Vashurov. The moldings and cradles made at the highest technological level, demonstrate the best examples of Russian jewelry art in the early twentieth century, among them are works created according to sketches of S. Vashkov by the well-known firms of P. Ovchinnikov and Olovyanishnikov. At the exhibition for the first time will be presented a hinge, which belonged to Maria Olovyanishnikov's daughter. In 1899 Maria Ivanovna married Jurgis Baltrušaitis, a symbolist poet, translator and diplomat, and in 1939 the family moved to Paris. In 2022 a hinge belonging to her was offered at auction and returned to Russia through acquisition for a private collection.

Participants of the exhibition are the Museum of Christian Art of the Moscow Theological Academy, the M. Abramov Museum of Russian Icons and private collectors.

Curators of the exhibition: Director of the Andrei Rublev Museum M.B. Mindlin, chief researcher S.V. Gnutova, head of the department of expertise and art findings J.G. Belik.