Exhibition "Fyodor Dostoevsky in the Fine Arts from the State Russian Museum Collection. On the 200th Anniversary of the Writer’s Birth"
The exhibition was prepared for the 200th anniversary of one of the most famous and frequently cited Russian writers - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881).
His training at the Engineering School (in the 1840s), located in the Mikhailovsky (Engineering) Castle (now a branch of the Russian Museum), is an excellent occasion for the Russian Museum to pay tribute to the memory of one of the authors of the Petersburg myth by presenting an exposition of works from the museum collection in honor of this anniversary. The exhibition does not claim to reveal the Dostoevsky phenomenon in all its fullness and complexity. However, it quite diversely and extraordinarily reflects the literary and philosophical heritage of the writer and his contradictory image through the prism of the creative reflection of artists who worked in different techniques and genres.
The significance of Dostoevsky as a writer for Russian culture is exceptionally great, which could not but leave a noticeable trace in Russian fine arts of the last century and a half. The Russian Museum possesses a large number of paintings, graphic and sculptural works connected with the name of Dostoevsky.
This is a varied and vivid material: the images of the writer himself - from the well-known engraved portraits of the late XIXth century and classical monumental sculptural works, to vivid psychological interpretations in painting and graphics (L. Bernshtam, S. Konenkov, G. Korzhev, G. Nemenova, V. Favorsky, etc.); whole series of illustrations to the works of Dostoevsky, interpreting his complex, multifaceted texts in different ways (M. Dobuzhinsky, N. Alekseev, A. Goncharov, A. Korsakova-Rudovich, M. Churakova, V. Goryaev, etc.); sketches of costumes and scenery for theatrical performances based on the works of Dostoevsky, made in the first third of the twentieth century (M. Dobuzhinsky, A. Benois, K. Petrov-Vodkin), etc.
The exhibition is a complex fusion of works with a wide variety of stylistic features and revealing a whole spectrum of creative aspirations of artists who decided to appeal to the image of the great Russian writer and his literary heritage.
