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Vrsac Online

January 22, 2022

News

„The Brilliance of Russian painters“ exhibition in Vrsac – a tribute to „white“ Russians

The exhibition „The Brilliance of Russian painters ” opens today at the City Museum in Vrsac, where the works of “white” Russians in Yugoslavia will be presented. Nikola Kusovac, who will open the exhibition, reminds of the importance of “white” Russians and their role in development of Serbian culture and assesses that we, as a society and nation, are not ungrateful to them, but that we are negligent.

The exhibition „The Brilliance of Russian painters “,  which opens on Saturday, January 22 at the City Museum in Vrsac, will present works by “white” Russians who settled in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after the October Revolution, from the collection of Vladimir Peshich. The exhibition will be opened by art historian and longtime curator of the National Museum in Belgrade, Nikola Kusovac.

Nikola Kusovac’s personal debt to Russian emigrants

Nikola Kusovac says for Sputnik that as the Serbian proverb says „dog does not bark for the sake of the village, but for its own sake“, he reluctantly accepted the invitation to open the exhibition because he felt „an unpaid debt to Russian emigrants“.

„I owe most of my life to the exceptional pediatrician from Cetinje, Vladimir Petrovich Gerasimovich, a Russian born in Kiev. Not only did he treat me when I was a child during World War II, but he also provided food for me. One of my neighbors was another Russian emigrant, Vasily Shuchkin, who ran a children’s theater in Cetinje, gathered young people and taught us acting. He used to come to my mother every morning and ask how I was“, says Kusovac.

According to him, the two of them came to Cetinje at the same time when the largest number of Russian emigrants came and „fit with our trouble remarkably well“. Our country lost „almost all biologically potent and capable men in the First World War“, and then 40.000 – 50.000 real men came – engineers, officers, doctors, Russians, who got involved in all areas of our life.

Students of Repin in Vrsac, painters who „opened the 20th century“

Compared to engineers, musicians or theater directors, Russian painters probably have contributed to Serbian culture nothing less, according to Kusovac. However, he singles out one „grandmaster of his work“, whose painting will be exhibited at the exhibition in Vrsac – Stepan Fyodorovich Kolesnikov, a student of Repin.

Paintings by another of Repin’s students, Nikolai Kuznetsov, will also be presented. This artist was a member of the most famous Russian artists group, so-called The Wanderers. It is a movement in Russian art during the fifties and sixties of the 19th century, at the time when „Danilevsky works miracles and explains why the West and the East are not compatible“.

„The Wanderers went to the people to raise the folk culture and main personalities in this sphere were Repin, Kravckoi and they all were related to Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov, whose several paintings we will see in Vrsac, is on the famous painting painted by Repin, the most significant painting in the 19th century – ‘Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks’ and that portrait is kept in the National Museum in Belgrade“, reveals Kusovac.

According to him, Kuznetsov is one of the painters who defined modern art, i.e. „opened the world art of the 20th century“. Among the works that can be seen in Vrsac, he singles out paintings by Ippolit Maikovsky, the grandson of the world’s greatest maritime artist Aivazovsky.

Vrsac and Bela Crkva – bastions of “white” Russians

Kusovac reminds that the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the only country in Europe at that time that allowed “white” Russians to open military schools and garrisons on their territory, which is why “the Comintern and the Red International did not like us“. One of the places where they had their garrison was Bela Crkva, which is located near Vrsac.

„Vrsac and Bela Crkva are bastions of white Russians and a good part of the painters whose works will be on exhibited on this exhibition are from Banat. Those are not some big names, but they were initiators, culture-bearers. To be a culture-bearer is not something insignificant because we are talking about expanding the culture“, believes Kusovac.

We are not ungrateful – we are negligent

The influence of Russian painters on Serbian painting was greater later and it came through the second generation, which came with the great Serbian nationalist Ljubomir Michich and his magazine „Zenit“.

Thanks to Michich, who gave space to painters like Kandinsky and Archipenko, Serbian painting relied on the most advanced line of European painting, which was interrupted by the October Revolution. However, it came to us with a delay of two decades, and we did not “catch up” with the Russian avant-garde “very well” because we “fell in love with the French”, believes Kusovac.

„We are not ungrateful to Russian emigrants; we cannot be ungrateful as long as there are people who remember them. However, we are negligent. We are not ungrateful because we have that awareness, but we often work unsystematically“, concluded Kusovac.

https://www.vrsaconline.com/2022/01/22/izlozba-sjaj-ruskih-slikara-u-vrscu-omaz-belim-rusima/