The image of Chaliapin, which appears on the poster of the exhibition, but this time the original, receives visitors as they enter the rooms of the Benois wing, dedicated to the Moscow artist. The imposing presence of Godunov is another example of Golovin's skill to express inner world picturesque characters.

This and the following rooms feature landscapes, still lifes and a gallery of characters from Russian intellectual and artistic world, such as famous portrait Meyerhold. Most of the models belonged to a group of colleagues and artists who accompanied him: theater technicians, painters, patrons, directors, actors and singers.

To do this, he took advantage of a study he had done at the Mariinsky, where he had them dress many times in costumes that were stocked in theater stores. After the revolution, although many of his fellow artists emigrated, he continued to collaborate with the Mariinsky Operas, productions of Meyerhold and the Moscow Art Theatre.

The retrospective also highlights a gallery of portraits of Spanish women, the fruit of their travels in Europe, saturated with the exoticism of the beginning of the century. As in others, as in others, rich and exuberant polychrome, spatial fantasy and a sense of pictorial movement intoxicate the visitor and draw him into the territory halfway between legend and reality, which was promoted by the art circle World of ART.

Between its components appeared Alexandre Benois or Leon Bakst, who, next to Golovin, designed the productions of the first stage of Russian ballets that landed in the French capital. In search of a new neo-romantic style inspired by Russian folk art and legends, with particular appeal to other non-oil techniques, they revolutionized theater design and applied international cartographic scripts such as the Mariinsky.

This tendency to dramatize reality can be seen in a large part of the paintings that make up the exhibition. On the one hand, landscape works treated with the same parameters of light and space look like studios for sets. The compositions have a very balanced balance, as it could not be otherwise for those who have to combine their art with what is happening on stage. Most of these works are painted with materials that are not oils, using techniques such as gouache or pastel, which print great luminosity and set colors close to those seen on stage tables.

Without being a Golovinian follower of impressionism, the viewer can find in his dazzling paintings fragments with surfaces on which colorful dots appear, typical of the French movement. For those who can't visit St. Petersburg, but Moscow, you can go to the Metropol Hotel in the capital and appreciate the mosaic that adorns its walls, the work of Golovin in collaboration with Mikhail Vrubel.

All rights reserved to " Russian newspaper". But his name was not Russian, and his ancestry was half-French, half-Italian, and he belonged to a family, or rather a dynasty, of artists who had acquired an enviable reputation in Russia as architects, painters, and musicians.

His grandfather was director of the Venice Theater in La Fenice. He also composed ballets and numerous symphonies. If someone adds to his ancestors on the paternal and maternal side of his descendants, almost all artists, starting with his son-in-law an excellent artist.

Cherekesov, his nephew Lanseray, who is as sensitive as his "Old St. Petersburg" charm, Mrs. Serebryakova, will agree that few families can boast of creating such a phalanx of talented artists. Alexandre Benois joined the high school with some of his future collaborators in the art magazine "World of Art": Konstantin Somov and Serge Jagilev, and his vocation as a painter began when he entered the Saint's School of Fine Arts. Petersburg, but disillusioned with the routine nature of the teaching, he soon left it, at that time he was influenced to a certain extent by German artists such as Bocklin and Menzel, and he allowed himself to be credited by Richard Muther, who asked him to write for his "History of Art", and then a very fashionable chapter on painting in Russia in the nineteenth century.

On his return to Russia, he advocated the art of the West, and especially French painting, in his journal he was patronized and subsidized by some Muscovites: Princess Tenishev and Savva Mamontov. He was very actively involved in writing articles, publishing wonderful articles "Beauty of St. Petersburg", "Prince Fusupov Gallery", "Portraits of Ingres", Maurice Denis.

At the same time, he reveals himself as one of the masters of the art of the book with his illustrations to the poems of the great romantic Pushkin: The Queen of Spades, The Bronze Horseman, which is nothing more than the equestrian end of Peter the Great in bronze by the French sculptor Falcone.

He celebrates his holidays in Brittany, where he communicates with French artists Lucien Simon, Desvaliers, Princes. Petrushka, who accompanied Stravinsky's music, received an equally triumphant reception. Activity Alexandra Benois becomes at this time of full maturity diverse and its production is so extensive in the most diverse areas that it is difficult to follow D., who entrusts him with the heading of art criticism, We could not make a better choice. But at the political level, clashes were bound to happen.

Alexandre Benois had to go on a journey of exile with his family, and France, the fatherland of his ancestors, showed him more attraction than Germany or even Italy. For this great worker, exile was not synonymous with rest. During this long period, darkened by the death of his wife, his thoughts and hands never remained idle. He created for Ida Rubinstein a production of the Lady of the Camellias.

Unfortunately, these are just childhood memories that stop at the age of 20. But this dawn is enough to light up his whole life. The name World of Art, which refers both to a group of artists who rebel against academism and to the magazine that served as their platform, refers to the reactionary movement against the Secession that preceded it in the path of emancipation, but soon degenerated into an artisan corporation that dealt more social propaganda than real art.

This subject is dissatisfied with young artists for a double reason: because it was borrowed from the old arsenal of mythology and, moreover, into mythology, while they strove to consider objects both living and Slavic. Prior to this, exhibitions were a privilege reserved for the two capitals, Petersburg and Moscow, in the hope of reaching the dispossessed masses and probably also collecting some commissions by transporting their works from city to city. This innovation is in line with their social trends.

Mostly from very modest families, the sons of popes or peasants, these revolutionaries had the principle that art is not intended for the pleasure of dilettantes, but should serve the people, translate it into images, demand the abolition of serfdom, condemn the abuses of the tsarist regime.

According to this concept of militants who oppose the art of the mandarins, any artist who is aware of his duties must first of all be a propagandist and collaborate with his brush with opposition journalists. In the history of the artist Surikov, nationalism prevails over socialism. Siberian in origin, he glorifies the conquest of Siberia by the Cossacks, later - the passage of the Suvorov Alps.

In a minor mode, genre painting deals with analogous, anecdotal, and endearing subjects. But the inspiration is the same, and the flaw is equally obvious: it is a matter that matters, much more than the way it is treated. The problems of compiling, invoicing take second place. It is against this degradation visual arts a new generation is rising, of which Alexandre Benois was one of the most listened to leaders. The Art World members are not only embarrassed.

But of a higher social class, richer, more cultured, more cosmopolitan, without nationalist and xenophobic prejudices. Art is not a propaganda tool for them, but an end in itself: it should be in the service of beauty, and not a political party or even a country.