Since I had limited time in Moscow, I went to one museum – the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val (Третьяковская галерея на Крымском Валу) – a branch of the State Tretyakov Gallery.
Entrance to Park Kultury (Gorky Park)
The main gallery State Tretyakov Gallery is a huge complex, very popular, and shows Russian art from the 11th to the early 20th centuries. The gallery’s building on Krymsky Val houses the only permanent exhibition of 20th century Russian art in the country. Click here for the main gallery’s web site, from there you can navigate to the page about the Krymsky Val branch.
The Krymsky Val branch of the gallery is located in a park of arts – Muzeon (МУЗЕОН) – between the Park Kultury and the Oktyabrskaya metro stations.
I walked from Oktyabrskaya, passed the entrance to Gorky Park (Park Kultury as the locals know it) to reach this park next to the Moskva river.
It was a sunny but chilly March day. There were lots of people about because the building that houses the gallery also has a wing that serves as an exhibition hall. And there was something going on – ? – they would let me in if I sign some form to order a magazine and give them my email address … not worth it.
The building is a huge rectangular box.
Main entrance
The lobby is very spacious, open and sunny.
The gallery has a small coffee area and book/souvenir shop – really quite small relative to the amount of art the gallery is displaying. It seemed like a communist effort in commerce when one compares it with the shops in museums in the west.
The gallery management was also very particular as to what can be carried inside – the rule was strictly enforced by the docent.
However, photography without a flash is not prohibited. Hence, I will use a few later posts to show some Russian art that are not easily seen outside.
On the first floor before one goes further upstairs to the gallery is this familiar model/sculpture by Vladimir Taltlin for the project for the Monument to the Third International (1919–20). It was a design for a grand monumental building in St. Petersburg that was never built.
Models of this hypothetical building have been erected also in the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
This branch of the Tretyakov Gallery displays works by Russian avant-garde masters from the 1900s-1920s who are famous all over the world, such as K.Malevich, V.Kandinsky, M.Chagall, P.Filonov and L.Popova.
More artwork to come in later posts.