Attack of Don Quixotes

New project of the AZ Museum presents works by Anatoly Zverev of the 1960s-1980s about Don Quixote taken from the AZ Museum collection and other private collections, as well as colored subscription lithographs of Salvador Dali created in 1957 for the French edition livre d'artiste from the collection of Boris Fridman.

Works by contemporary artists Platon Infante and Daria Konovalova-Infante were created especially for the exhibition.

The project was accompanied by film screenings, lectures and musical evenings.

Art director and curator of the exhibition Polina Lobachevskaya is citing Nabokov’s lecture about the Cervantes’ novel: 

"Over four hundred years Don Quixote was riding over the jungles and tundra of the human thinking, multiplying his power and dignity. We are no longer laughing at him…A parody was converted into a model".

...While re-reading "Don Quixote", we are chaffing, disclosing resemblant features of the main character of the novel with our museum’s hero — artist Anatoly Zverev. "I have no right to flaunt The Knights Errant Code and, in between, perhaps, I know that they never paid for stays at inns, nor for anything else: everybody had to and must accord them a heartly welcome for the incredible tortures they suffer while searching for adventures for days and nights, unprotected from calamities. Overcoming frost and ardour, on foot and horse-drawn, insatiable and greedy, our heroes are stranded under the burden of human encumbrances". Though, perhaps, A. Zverev’s appearance mostly resembles Sancho Pansa, a lot of similarities could be found between the artist and the hidalgo. Zverev possessed a rampant imagination and a strong sense of adventure, was passionate and felt an ardent love for his Dulcinea, whom he called Starukha (old lady), obviously, resemble the Cervantes character.

Don Quixote became famous over the centuries as a legendary character not only in literature, but also in the visual arts. Anatoly Zverev who, like the beloved hero of his paintings, was repeatedly ridiculed, often persecuted, became the great artist and classic of the 20th century. Both a literary hero and our beloved painter prove that there is actually a room for solo players.

Though we live in unusual times when only an Attack of Don Quixote saves. The more of them, the more chances that evil will be defeated by mercy, generosity, unselfishness, and, of course, laughter.