Memorable Dates of Russia: Omsk to host "The Right to Truth" exhibition marking the 150th anniversary of the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions

On December 15, 2021, the Mikhail Vrubel Omsk Regional Fine Arts Museum will launch the exhibition "The Right to Truth". It marks the 150th anniversary of the first exhibition arranged by the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions on December 11, 1871.

The exposition features about 130 paintings, graphic works and sculptures by Peredvizhniki from the collections of five major regional art museums in Russia.

Shishkin, Repin, Levitan, Savrasov, Kramskoy, Perov, Surikov, Polenov, Vasnetsov - these names make up the golden fund of Russian culture.

The exhibition consists of four thematic sections. They correspond to the four main genres developed by the Society: History Textbook (historical genre), Turn to Life (everyday life), Heroes of the Time (portrait), Landscape of the Russian Soul (landscape). A separate section is devoted to graphic works from the collections of the Mikhail Vrubel Museum.

The exhibition presents famous canvases - The Rooks Have Come Back by Alexei Savrasov (1879); Night on the Dnieper (the 1880s) by Arkhip Kuindzhi; sketches for the famous paintings by Ilya Repin Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Ivan the Terrible and his Son Ivan on November 16, 1581; Boyarynya Morozova and Morning of Strelzy's Execution by Vasily Surikov.

Omsk residents will see many works for the first time. Among such paintings is a Portrait of E. D. Botkina (1881) by Ilya Repin. Elena Botkina (Dunker in her first marriage) ordered Mikhail Vrubel to create the Flowers (now this work is in the Omsk collection).

The sensation of this year was the discovery of the name of the author of two sculptural portraits from the collections of the Vrubel Museum. Both works were created by the outstanding Russian sculptor Mark Antokolsky, a participant in the first exhibition of the Society. The exposition includes his bas-relief Irrevocable Loss - a portrait of the dead son - Lev Antokolsky (last exhibited at Antokolsky's personal exhibition in 1880 in St. Petersburg) and a portrait of Lydia Polyakova.

The exhibition will run until March 27, 2022.