"Postcards from artists" Automatic translate

Curator Vera Pogodina presents for the twelfth time the annual project “Postcards from Artists” in the new Cube art space located in The Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The project will include more than 100 works by contemporary Russian artists. The exhibition will be open on December 4 and 5. “Postcards from artists” is a project of curator Vera Pogodina that has already become a tradition, annually held on the eve of Christmas and New Year holidays, thematically combines the works of contemporary Russian artists. The works were performed in a wide variety of styles and techniques: canvas / oil, paper / watercolor, paper / pencil, mixed media, collage, art object, photo / video art and others. The project "Postcards from artists" appeared in 2008 and was initially exhibited in the gallery of Vera Pogodina. The idea of ​​the project is to revive the genre of small gift work that artists gave to their relatives and friends. This genre was very popular in the middle and second half of the nineteenth century. A large number of such works by such masters as I. Shishkin, I. Aivazovsky, V. Polenov, K. Makovsky and others have reached us.

Over the years of its existence, the exhibition, conceived as a chamber festive event "for its own", has been transformed into large-scale museum expositions, in which more than 100 contemporary artists took part at different times. Today, "Postcards from artists" is a unique project that allows you to combine leading representatives of contemporary art of different generations in the format of a group exhibition.

“I try to attract more youth, so it turns out to show a slice of contemporary Russian culture from the classics of pop art and conceptualism, such as Alexander Kosolapov and Igor Makarevich, to beginning authors,” Vera Pogodina explains. “I am very pleased that well-known artists are ready to turn to the small format genre again and again for the sake of the opportunity to support the tradition of the New Year holiday.”

Fashion for small Christmas and New Year’s work came to Russia in the last quarter of the 19th century. From the very beginning, the idea of ​​an original miniature gift attracted the attention of famous Russian artists. Unique copies for relatives and drawings were made by Elizabeth Boehm, Alexander Benois, Ivan Bilibin, Igor Grabar, Boris Zvorykin, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Ilya Repin and others. The special artistic style of the classic New Year’s card existed until the middle of the last century, having survived war and revolution.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the concept of a small-format work of authorship or a "postcard" actually came to naught, giving way to monotonous stencils and endless photo landscapes. Thanks to the participation of contemporary artists, the project of Vera Pogodina not only allowed to bring this half-forgotten genre back to life, but also brought it to a whole new level. The festive nature of the project gives artists great freedom in choosing themes and plots, however, in each case, the small-format work turns out to be a projection of the author’s style, which is always recognizable by the viewer.