The Exhibitions: The Architectural Graphics of XVIII-XXI Centuries Presented in Moscow

"Italy Only! The Architectural Graphics of XVIII-XXI Centuries" exhibition opened on April 18, 2014, at the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow).

The exhibition consists of drawings and watercolors from Tretyakov Gallery, Sergey Choban Foundation (Berlin), the works from private collections and the works of contemporary architects from their personal collections and dedicated to the Italian architecture, seen through the artists’ and the architects’ eyes.

The exhibition features approximately 200 sheets of different periods. Among them is a considerable range of works by masters of the XVIII century - the golden age of architectural graphics.

Graphics if Italian artists, whose names are deeply tied with the history of Russian art, are a separate theme of the exhibition.

In the late XIX - early XX century Italy became a place of pilgrimage of many Russian artists and architects.  Besides the monuments of antiquity, they were discovering for themselves an early Christian, the middle ages and the baroque era architecture.

In Soviet times, Italy could be visited by a very few artists and architects, traveling in organized groups on business trips or tours. In their brief creative journeys they were eagerly sketching their impressions, the major of which were the architectural monuments. Thus, theirs Italian imagery has fragmented, kaleidoscopic nature.

The exhibition completed with a section comprising four graphic works of contemporary architects: M. B. Atayants, S. O. Kuznetsov, M. A. Filippov and S. E. Tchoban. Working in different styles, they use the architecture of Italy as an ideal of formal solutions, example of beauty and harmony in art.

Italy remains a place of pilgrimage, the center of gravity of creative forses of Europe for centuries. The exhibition offers an audience a chance to measure how diverse are the artists’ and the architects’ outlooks for the plastic arts of this country: from the drawings of educational and documentary character to a dialogue in the genre of architectural fantasies, from the praising of the ancient monuments of classical culture to delighting the medieval and baroque forms.