Beauties of the Centuries

This exhibition displayed the best female portraits by Anatoly Zverev — deliberately unofficial, but truly folk artist. These masterful art pieces are especially valued by collectors and instantly recognized in albums and exhibitions.

Well ahead the birth of the instantaneous, "mobile" photography, the artist discovered an effect of the instant shot. His black and white graphic works depict a model’s features, her immediate emotions seen and caught rapidly and furtively — in a split of second.

"Sit down, detulya*, I'm immortalized!". With this phrase Zverev invited young ladies for being his portrait models. And exactly this phrase served as a title of one of the exhibition rooms, where the portraits of women who still remember these fine-art-spectacles were displayed.

The significance and complexity of Zverev’s portraits were highlighted by the history line — on large screens we tried to show how harmonically the portraits resonated with masterpieces of past epochs. Anatoly Zverev himself never hid his sources of inspiration, listing his "teachers" from the Renaissance period to the Russian avant-guard.

All facets of Zverev’s portraits, unexpected angles and historic connections we assembled in a book "Beauties of the Centuries".

Moreover, specially for the exhibition opening, Russian designer Igor Chapurin created a Tribute to the Zverev’s beauties: design t-short and neck handkerchief. Presentation of the capsule collection was held within the exhibition opening.
Audio-tour by the exhibition is available on platforms Soundcloud and izi.TRAVEL.


*Russian short version for "baby"