The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT

temporary exhIbItIons
france – ruSSia year 2010
2010 was declared the France – Russia Year. A number of exhibitions
were organized as part of the celebrations, with loans of French art to the Hermitage
and loans of works from the Hermitage to France.
exhiBiTionS of french arT in The hermiTage
picasso. from the collection of the picasso museum –
paris
18 June – 5 September 2010
In the summer a major exhibition of works by Pablo Picasso
from the Musée National Picasso in Paris – one of
the most important events on the St. Petersburg art scene
in the last decade – was mounted in the state rooms of the
Winter Palace. During major refurbishment at the Musée
National Picasso its collections were sent on a world tour.
Each version of the exhibition – shown in Madrid, Abu
Dhabi, Helsinki and Moscow before coming to St. Petersburg
– was slightly different in composition.
The Paris museum was founded in 1985. Despite its comparative
youth, it possesses the world’s largest collection of
the great artist’s works, 290 of which were selected for the
Hermitage to reflect all the periods in his career, all the
types and genres of his art. In order to achieve this, it was
necessary to resolve the problems of showing them in an
old palace that had no specially equipped display rooms
of the required size. This demanded no small measure of
inventiveness on the part of those who devised the concept
of the exhibition (on the French side – Anne Baldassari,
Director of the Musée Picasso, on the Russian side – Boris
Kuzyakin and Vitaly Koroliov, members of staff of the Exhibition
Design Department). It was decided to hold the
exhibition mainly in four state rooms of the Winter Palace
– the Oriental Gallery, the Field-Marshals, Armorial
and Picket Rooms – in chronological order, from Picasso’s
early youthful works of the first decade of the 20th century
to his last works dating from the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The exhibition opened with the world-famous masterpieces
Death of Casagemas (1901) and La Celestina (1904).
The most important works of his Cubist period – Three
Women under a Tree (1908) and the etudes for Les Demoiselles
d’Avignon (1907) – were supplemented by etudes for
several of the Hermitage’s works, such as The Farmer’s Wife
and The Dance of the Veils. The display ended in the Oriental
Gallery with works from Picasso’s neoclassical period – Portrait
of Olga in an Armchair (1918), Paul as Harlequin (1924)
and The Village Dance (1922).
Never before had the art of Picasso’s surrealist period been
shown so fully in the Hermitage. Surrealism and works from
the 1950s were featured in the Armorial Hall, which was
a bold venture: Picasso’s pictures had to brave the ordeal
of the sumptuous hall’s classical architecture. Major works
from the 1930s were displayed alongside his sculpture of
that period, chiefly a series of female busts from 1931, while
the 1950s canvases were surrounded by the splendid bronzes
The Goat (1950) and Woman with a Pushchair (1950).
The same hall included celebrated works from Picasso’s
war period that became symbols of that bleak time: Cat
Catching a Bird (1939), the sculpture Head of a Bull (1942)
and Man with a Lamb (1943). The large canvas Massacre in
Korea (1951) acted as an unusual link between the Oriental
Gallery and the works in the Armorial Hall. This, the
only Picasso’s work to be displayed in the Field-Marshals
Room, was deliberately placed facing a customary example
of a battle painting – Peter von Hess’s Battle of Klyastitsi.
The Picket Room was given over to some of the most representative
works of the 1960s and 1970s, when a very
important place was occupied by Picasso’s dialogue with
old masters. They include a variation on Edouard Manet’s
Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe (1960), images of matadors, lovers,
and also a sculpture of cut iron leaf. The display came
to an end with the virtuoso canvas The Young Artist (1972),
Picasso’s latest work in the exhibition.
A remarkable part of the retrospective was provided by Picasso’s
sketches linked to Russian ballet productions, which
were displayed on the second floor of the Winter Palace.
They were supplemented by 70 photographs of the master
and his friends and books. Documentary films about the
master’s career were shown in the last room.
The exhibition in the state rooms of the Hermitage was
the principal event in the 2010 France – Russia Year to be
held in St. Petersburg.
contemporary porcelain of Sévres
15 June – 15 September 2010
By Albert Kostenevich
The exhibition took place in the Great Hall of Menshikov
Palace. Pieces made in the Sévres factory in the second
half of the 20th and early 21st centuries were displayed
in Russia for the first time. Around 100 works by 40 contemporary
masters demonstrated the principal genres in
porcelain manufacture.
Sculptors Vincent Barré, Louise Bourgeois, Joan Chretien,
Jim Dean, Francoise Petrovitch, Francoise Vergier and Natalie
Talek preferred to express their creative individuality
not in marble or bronze, but in delicate porcelain. All the
variety in the contemporary decoration of services was
evident in the works of Pierre Aleschinski, Marc Couturier,
Philippe Faviere, Raoul Marek and Adrian Sachs, as
well as in pieces made by the Russians Erik Bulatov and
Sergei Polyakov. Some of the most original exhibits were
vases with the most unusual shapes and profiles (by Pierre
Charpin, José Levy, Richard Peduzzi, Christian Renonciat,
Ettore Sottsass and Betty Woodman).
The Sévres representatives remarked on the fact that the
exhibits were shown in the special “historic” atmosphere
of Menshikov Palace, conveying a link between periods.
It was particularly significant for the Sévres factory that
the exhibition was shown in one of the world’s leading
museums, the State Hermitage, and in St. Petersburg –
a city where Sévres porcelain was known, valued and loved
as early as in the 18th century.
The exhibition attracted over 22,000 people, including ceramists,
sculptors and artists from St. Petersburg, Moscow
and other Russian cities, as well as foreign visitors.
centre pompidou in the State hermitage museum
5 October – 14 November 2010
By Yan Vilensky
This project, held in the Antechamber, the Nicholas Hall
and the Hermitage Theatre, was one of the events in the
France – Russia Year and was intended to demonstrate the
various forms of the Pompidou Centre’s work with contemporary
art.
hermiTage exhiBiTionS in france
Besides the Holy Russia exhibition in the Louvre, in which
the Hermitage took part together with other Russian museums,
an exhibition from our museum’s collection was
staged in the Musée d’Armée in Paris
in the Service of the Tsars. The russian imperial guard
from peter the great to the october revolution
8 October 2010 – 23 January 2011
The Imperial Guard is a subject that is very dear to the
Hermitage. The Guard played a very important part in the
history of the Russian Empire, the centre of which was the
Winter Palace – the residence of its sovereigns for a century
and a half. The glory of the Russian Imperial Guard
is recorded forever in the Winter Palace’s celebrated 1812
War Gallery. The history of the Russian Imperial Guard
ended with the fall of the Empire in 1917, the bloody bat-
temporary exhIbItIons
The aim of the project was to focus attention on ways
of showing contemporary art works and on a conversation
about them. This was the continuation of the interaction
and mutual enrichment between Russian and French culture
over many years. The staging of the project in the
main state rooms of the Winter Palace led to the opening
of a multilevel dialogue between styles and ages, which
became a well-balanced narrative about transformations
in contemporary art.
The project consisted of two parts: a festival and an exhibition.
For the festival designer pavilions (Heimo Zobering,
Jorge Pardo) were arranged in the Nicholas Hall from
5 October, and various types of artistic activity revolved
around them for the following week: experimental performances
by French and Russian actors, round tables,
master classes and discussions. The Hermitage Theatre
staged showings of video works by French artists from the
Pompidou Centre collection, as well as a number of dramatic
presentations. French and Russian performers and
figures in the world of contemporary art were invited
to participate in the festival.
The exhibition opened in the Antechamber on 13 October
and continued until 14 November. The display included
twelve masterpieces of twentieth-century French art from
the Pompidou Centre collection – famous works by Marcel
Duchamp, Yves Klein, Martial Raysse, Jean Dubuffet, César,
Roman Opalka, Robert Filliou, Daniel Buren, Gerard Garouste,
Georges Mathieu, Bernard Lavier and other artists,
all of which were being shown in St. Petersburg for the
first time.
By Dmitry Ozerkov
tles of the First World War and the tragedy of the Civil War.
Guards that fled the country carefully preserved the memory
of their regiments abroad. Memories of events in Russian
history, undeservedly forgotten for several decades,
are now being revived, and the State Hermitage Museum
is taking an active part in this.
In the exhibition at the Musée d’Armée in Paris the State
Hermitage Museum showed around 250 first-rate works:
painting, graphic art, decorative applied art and weapons.
Under the exhibition agreement the Musée d’Armée and
the Museum of the Lifeguards of the Cossack Regiment
in Paris also took part.
This exhibition was the last to be organized by our colleague
Sergei Plotnikov, Head of the Arsenal Department –
an outstanding authority on military history, a talented
scholar and a good friend.
By Dmitry Liubin
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