On 14-15 December, 2022 the Russian Museum took part in the first Russian-Bahrain cultural forum “Diversity Of Cultures As A Ground For A Dialogue” and in a museum road-show in Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain.

On December 14th, the opening of the digital exhibition “Russian Avant-Garde '' took place in the house of Music of Mohamed bin Faris. The General Director V. Gusev spoke in public at the opening of the Forum and exhibition.

Russian avant-garde is one of the most vivid phenomenon in the world of artistic culture. K. Malevich, the founder of suprematism “new picturesque realism” plays a central role in this movement. It's amazing that one hundred years later, the combinations of color and black-and-white figures taken by K. Malevich for the basis broke the ice in the development of computer vision. And “Black Square”, being the most famous work of the artist, is compared with QR-code that has come into use nowadays.

In fact, the Russian avant-garde was the direct predecessor of modern computer graphics and new media. The revolution in art gave birth to a new reality – the reality of art itself. From nature to form, from form to sign, from sign to codes. Now we live in the new digital reality where QR code is becoming a key to transporting in space and time, getting access to unique archival materials, collections of art held in museums.

The digital exhibition “Russian Avant-Garde” based on the collection of the State Russian Museum introduces us with the outstanding Russian avant-garde masters’ works of art created in 1912-1932. These are the works of K. Malevich, his students and followers (N.M. Suetin, N.A. Udaltsova, O.V. Rozanova, L.S. Popova, A.A. Exter), the representatives of constructivism “the new word of art” (A.M. Rodchenko, K.K. Medunetsky, S. Ya. Senkin) and also the works made by original innovative artists experimented with color and optical illusions (V.V. Kandinsky, M.V. Matyushin). Multimedia technology allows to visualise the process of evaluation in ideas and creative methods of avant-garde masters. Thanks to this technology there will be presented 40 works of art made by Russians’ avant-garde masters. Visitors will be able to see the most important works of Russian avant-garde on their gadgets thanks to the special QR codes that refer to highly accurate digital copies of artists’ works published in the web portal “Virtual Russian Museum”.

In the space of the digital exhibition “Russian Avant-Garde” there is a play area where children and their parents can put together separated parts of famous Russian avant-garde artists. Due to technologies of alternative reality you can see a virtual transformation of the suprematic composition that is based on the works by K. Malevich.

There are no original works of art at the digital exhibition «Russian Avant-Garde». This is its universality, and this is another task of the exhibition - to demonstrate the capabilities of new technologies and emphasise their limitations, put an end to the issue that copies will replace the originals.

The round table “Modern Tools and Technologies” was held in the context of the “museum road-show” on December 15th. “Museum road-show” is a presentation Marathon of flagship Russian museums that is oriented to promote dialogue between the heads of the leading specialised institutions of two countries.

You can get acquainted with the collection of the Russian Museum dedicated to the Avant-Garde here.