Painting: New Collections. 5 Exhibitions on Painting and Genre Diversity

In October, the GES-2 House of Culture will delight visitors with the opening of a new, large-scale exhibition project that reinterprets classical painting genres from a contemporary perspective—still life, portrait, and landscape are central to the discourse. These three genres are examined within a sociocultural framework, relating to significant cultural processes in human development and modern ways of depicting reality. The exhibition brings together over 80 artists and approximately 100 works, many of which are exhibits from prominent Russian art institutions. Renowned master painters are placed in dialogue with contemporary artists—this juxtaposition represents how classical painting genres became precursors to modern forms of digital content./ Curators: Dmitry Belkin, Andrei Vasilenko, Andrei Parshikov, Karen Sarkisov, Alexandra Tumarkina/ Artists: Tatiana Andreeva, Alina Brovina, Marcel Broders, «John Jolly’s Flowers, ” „Collective Actions, ” Kazimir Malevich, Oleg Matrokhin, Claude Monet, Roman Sakin, Paul Signac, Franz Sneders, Anna Taganцева-Kobzeva, Caspar David Friedrich, Dmitry Tsvetkov, Ivan Chemakin, Ellina Gennadyevna, and others…

The culmination of a significant project at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art is fast approaching, marking a return to the scene of classical painting as an artistic statement. Eleven artists—a generation that graduated from two of the major Moscow universities, the Surikov Institute and the Stroganov University—are represented. Each artist is featured in the exhibition rooms «in large format» through large-scale paintings, graphic series, sketches, and studies, as well as new works created specifically for the project. The impressive volume of these works establishes painting as a relevant form of expression regarding the spirit and pulse of modernity. Traditional techniques in the hands of contemporary artists portray the portrait of the generation of painters of the 2020s—various themes, genres, and mediums converge in one place, inviting the viewer to contemplate the rich imagery of approaches and relationships to the world.

/ Curators: Anna Arutyunyan, Andrey Egorov

/ Artists: Egor Plotnikov, Egor Koshelev, Evgeniya Buravleva, Anastasia Kuznetsova-Ruf, Evgeniya Voynar, Ivan Korshunov, Ivan Novikov, Anton Kuznetsov, Maria Safronova, Sayan Baigaliev, Alexander Kupalyan

Video art exhibition where the landscape genre becomes a conceptual platform for discussing the feeling of uncertainty and the approach of the unnamed. The landscape holds within it numerous traces—historical and cultural layers, and symbolic connotations. The videos in the exhibition feature landscapes that amplify a sense of anxiety and suspense in the viewer. Minute details, which in some cases are impossible to grasp immediately, activate a state of anticipation—that something is definitely going to happen, and the surrounding environment is preparing to receive the future./ Curator: Marina Fomenko/ Artists: Vika Ilyushkina, Alexandra Mitlyanskaya, Tuan Mu, Veronika Solovyova, Marina Fomenko, the group «Nezhnye Baby»

Now, we will briefly turn to immortal classics. The Hermitage will showcase the restored painting by Nicolas Poussin, «Landscape with Polyphemus, ” from 1649, which Catherine II purchased in 1772. It spent two years being brought back to life in the Laboratory of Scientific Restoration of Canvas Painting. Poussin interprets the Ovidian tale of the cyclops in love with Galatea not as high drama, but as an elegy: the love-tamed Polyphemus plays the flute for nymphs and satyrs, and nature itself is the protagonist, with the myth merely serving as a pretext—making the ancient subject a hymn to its eternal order and beauty. Before this restoration, the highest-level restorer Alexey Nikolsky revived seven other Poussin works, after which the paint layer was consolidated, the canvas was backed, later additions were removed, and losses were filled in. What once seemed like evening light has revealed itself to be the sun—vibrant greens and the bright Sicilian sky have emerged. The painting has come alive with new colors and new meaning—it is ready to welcome visitors./ Scientific Director of the Project: Natalia Seryabryannaya — Curator of the Department of Western European Fine Arts/ Project Curator: Viktor Korobov — Head of the Laboratory of Scientific Restoration/ Artist-Restorer: Alexey Nikolsky

Starting in September 2026, Krasnoyarsk will celebrate the centennial of Andrey Pozdeev—he would turn 100 on September 27th. The «Ploshchad Mira» Museum Center is responding to this with a series of exhibitions across all its floors. Together, they form an effort to understand the phenomenon of the Krasnoyarsk genius through various contexts and dialogues: painting (the «Essence of Painting» section), graphic art (the «Graphic Multitude» section), photography (an archival installation featuring the artist’s photographs in different situations and life events), individual programmatic works and thematic cycles (the «Biblical Scene» and «Golgotha» sections), as well as a group exhibition of young Krasnoyarsk artists as a «tribute event» to the master.The title «Anthology» works literally here: it refers both to the curatorial selection and to a «flowerbed"—in Greek. Pozdeev’s works and images are distributed across the key venues, the «conceptual flowerbeds» of «Ploshchad Mira,» to create the effect of the artist’s living presence in the present day. It is precisely his painting legacy, his drive to explore the possibilities of color, his mastery of canvas and paint techniques, and his genre diversity that defined Pozdeev as a genius of the Krasnoyarsk art scene./ Lead Curator: Sergey Kovalevsky/ Curators of the group exhibition «Great Things are Visible from Afar»: Nadya Kotova-Krushinskaya and Sergey Kovalevsky

Text Author: Michael Arutyunyan

Cover image: View of the exhibition of the retrospective project «Pozdeev Anthology» at the «Ploshchad Mira» Museum Center (September 24, 2026 — February 21, 2027)

Image Source: Project page on the «Ploshchad Mira» Museum Center website