Winged-Troika and Its Passengers

CHAGALL. ZVEREV. KOSMACHEV

AZ Museum presents the exhibition "The Troika-Bird and Its Passengers." This new project brings together graphic works by Anatoly Zverev, etchings by the classic of European modernism Marc Chagall, and a sculptural object by one of the leading contemporary masters, Vadim Kosmachev.

The creative pursuits of these very different 20th-century artists converge at a single point — at some moment, Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls" became a source of inspiration for each of them. Each felt the need to immerse themselves in the boundless world of Gogol's poem and to find in it images consonant with their style and time. In turn, the project's curator Polina Lobachevskaya proposed a universal metaphor as the key to the exhibition — passengers racing on a troika-bird — expanding the range of works and addressing them to 21st-century viewers.

Anatoly Zverev (1931–1986) illustrated Gogol throughout his life. AZ Museum has already exhibited and published his drawings for various Gogol stories. Zverev approached "Dead Souls" repeatedly — the first sketches date from the late 1950s, when the young artist literally burst onto the Moscow art scene; some graphic works held in various collections belong to the later period of the artist's career. Circumstances did not allow Zverev to create a comprehensive and complete cycle. However, the works that have been gathered today (in addition to the AZ Museum collection, the project features works from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), as well as private collections of A. Orlov, S. Alexandrov, I. Kardashidi, and others) speak to a witty and original concept. Many of them are being exhibited for the first time.

The story of Marc Chagall's (1887–1985) etchings is no less interesting and dramatic. In 1923, Ambroise Vollard, a French patron and publisher, approached the artist with a proposal to create a livre d'artiste (a special collector's edition) based on a literary work. Chagall chose Gogol's work. Over the course of two years, the artist created 96 etchings depicting characters and scenes from the poem "Dead Souls." The edition with the artist's plates was printed in 1927, but the book remained forgotten for a long time. It was not until 1948 that the work was finally published by another, no less famous publisher — Eugène Tériade — and received the Grand Prix at the Venice Biennale. For the exhibition "The Troika-Bird and Its Passengers," works by the world-famous artist were provided by collector Boris Fridman, one of the finest connoisseurs and collectors of livre d'artiste. According to Boris Mikhailovich, this will be one of the first museum exhibitions where Chagall's etchings will be shown to viewers on such a large scale outside of a printed edition.

Finally, the third participant in the dialogue about Gogol's "Dead Souls" presents an entirely new work created specifically for this project. A contemporary of Zverev, Vadim Kosmachev belongs to the cohort of outstanding Russian artists who in the 1960s–70s became harbingers of the "Soviet Renaissance" — an era of free creators and bold artistic explorations. Finding himself in emigration in the late 1970s, he rightfully gained fame as a leading European artist, whose dialogue with the Russian avant-garde and innovative experiments with dynamic forms are recognized as one of the most important phenomena in art at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries. Working at the intersection of genres and forms — sculpture, installation, technical experimentation — Vadim Kosmachev enthusiastically responded to the curatorial concept, offering his own interpretation of the "troika-bird."

Even those familiar with the creative method of creating exhibitions at AZ Museum will be surprised by the conceptual and design solution of the exhibition, which incorporates cinema and multimedia as an essential element. This time, video works by animation artists Mikhail Shepilov and Alexandra Anokhina have become part of the living museum space. 
The exhibition is accompanied by children's educational programs, as well as Andrei Plakhov's film lecture series "Grotesque and Satire."

Creators of the exhibition "The Troika-Bird and Its Passengers":
Director General of AZ Museum — Natalia Opaleva
Author and Curator — Polina Lobachevskaya
Production Designer — Gennady Sinev
Media Artist — Alexander Dolgin
Animation Artists — Mikhail Shepilov, Alexandra Anokhina

Information partners of the project: