The State Russian Museum and the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus present the unprecedented exhibition project «Russia and Belarus: Crossed Destinies», which is the result of fruitful cooperation between the two leading museums of the sovereign countries united in the Union State. The show addresses the oeuvre of 19th- and 20th-century artists in the context of Russian and Belarusian cultural interaction.
The exhibition features more than 250 works by the artists who were born in Belarus, but by the will of fate, first of all, of the invariably friendly coexistence of the countries and peoples, both in the historical context and in the modern world, became virtually masters of the same school. These masters often received their professional education at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts and the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, and became members of the same art associations and generally adhered to a single tradition. At the same time, their work retained national features, views of native nature, national heroes and types. In essence, this is a rare example of unity in diversity.
The unique exhibition project presents the oeuvre of 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century artists who were born in the historical lands of Belarus and received professional education and the potential for creative self-realisation in Russian higher education establishments.
The exhibition includes works of painting and graphic art, sculpture and applied art by the artists of the 19th and 20th centuries who are significant for Belarus and Russia: Józef Oleszkiewicz, Jan Chrucki, Apolinary Horawski, Zair Azgur, Yankel Kruger, Yehuda Pen, Robert Landarsky, Vladimir Stelmashonok, Nathan Voronov, Mai Dantsig and others. Their work in the heyday of Belarusian art present bright pages of the national art history. The beginning of the artists' creative path was connected with the main cultural centres of Russia, first of all St Petersburg (Leningrad) and Moscow. The comparative exhibition of such level has been organized for the first time ever. It enables to feature in detail the oeuvre of the leading and well-known masters and to introduce many new or little-known names to the interested viewers.
Our Belarusian friends and colleagues offered to show the works of the artists who worked in Belarus, whose works can be found in the collection of the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus (Minsk) and whose oeuvre has national characteristics, including portraitist and history painter Jozef Oleszkiewicz (1777–1830), portraitist Kandrat Karsalin (1809 – after 1883), genre painter, portraitist and still-life painter Jan Chrucki (1810–1885), landscapist and portraitist Apolinary Horawski (1833–1900), landscape painter Vitold Byalynitsky-Birulya (1872–1957), landscape and interior painter Stanistaw Zukowski (1875–1944).
In turn, the State Russian Museum presents masterpieces from its collection created by the artists of Belarusian origin: Vasily Sazonov (1779–1870), Fyodor Tulov (1792–1855), Sergei Zaryanko (1818–1870), Léon Bakst (1866–1924), and outstanding masters of the 20th century — Georgy Nissky (1903–1987), Evsei Moiseyenko (1916–1988) and others.
The exhibition includes sculptures by Oskar Meshchaninov (1884–1956), (1859–1939), Dmitry Stelletsky (1875–1947), Zair Azgur (1908–1995), Mikhail Kerzin (1883–1979), Gennady Muromtsev (1931–2022), as well as objects of decorative and applied arts by Mikalaj Michalap (1886–1979) and Vladimir Murakhver (1931–2017).
The joint exhibition project «Russia and Belarus: Crossed Destinies» is a manifesto of the common spiritual values in cultures of the two sovereign countries. The oeuvre of the masters of Russian and Belarusian art is not depersonalised according to the Western principle of the «melting-pot», but represents unique phenomena of the cultural basis of Slavic unity.
