Russia's Unkown Orient
Orientalist Painting 1850-1920

Design: Rudo Menge, Illustrated (colour and b&w), Paperback, 224 pages, 24.5 x 29.5 cm
English edition, ISBN 978-90-5662-762-1-1, € 35.00
Dutch edition, ISBN 978-90-5662-761-4
December 2010

IIn association with the Groninger Museum

This exhibition was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Fonds Kunst en Economie (Art and Economy Foundation), an initiative of VNO-NCW Noord, the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers for the Northern Netherlands. The foundation is financed by the Samenwerkingsverband Noord-Nederland (the North Netherlands Cooperative Enterprise), EZ/Kompas.

Exhibition at the Groninger Museum in Groningen from 19 December 2010 to 8 May 2011

The Groninger Museum has established a reputation for its successful exhibitions about nineteenth-century Russian art. This is the fifth major exhibition that the Groninger Museum has devoted to Russian art in recent years, continuing the series of exceptional presentations of Ilya Repin’s oeuvre, Russian landscapes, the circle around Diaghilev and the exhibition on Russian Legends, Folk Tales and Fairy Tales, which was highly popular with families. In this exhibition the Groninger Museum turns the spotlight on the symbolic, aesthetic and moral aspects of Russia’s Orient.

Russia’s Unknown Orient tells the story of Russia’s artistic and historical ties with its southern neighbours: Uzbekistan (former Turkistan), the countries of the Caucasus (Georgia and Armenia) and the Crimea – a bond that was marked by a fascination with oriental traditions and a succession of wars of conquest.

The most important artist in this context was Vasili Vereshchagin (1842-1904). He travelled with the army on campaigns to the south. As a war photographer avant la lettre he painted both the cruel reality of war and the riches of the oriental cultures, thus providing a window into an unfamiliar nineteenth- century oriental world. It goes without saying that these countries had their indigenous contemporary artists, who offered personal interpretations of the rich traditions of their homeland, which they continued to develop even under Russian dominion. The historical and art-historical context and the development of this diverse group of artists is explained by a range of authors and is generously illustrated, with more than 100 works by Vasili Vereshchagin, Martiros Sarian, Vasili Polenov, Niko Pirosmanishvili, Pavel Koeznetsov, Jevgeni Lansere and others. The authors approach this body of work from various angles, shedding light on Russia’s nineteenth-century culture and its diverse outlooks on imperialism and colonialism as well as elucidating the struggle of the peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia for freedom and independence.

> Order now at NAi Booksellers