In the Academy of arts overturned truck with picturesque treasures

Exhibitions showing collections of collectors in recent years are a real trend. Not so long ago, the collection of Mikhail Perchenko was shown here, and the author of this text has never hidden his love for similar stories, for example, to the Art Center. Moscow and other similar stories, because, above all, this is a unique opportunity to look at masterpieces that are not found in museums. In the case of the new exhibition in RAX, this is also the premiere, because the collection has never before been shown to the general public.

The collection of Svetlana and Pavel Romanov is an example where, without reading the accompanying texts to the exposition, you immediately feel that the works were collected based on personal preferences, good taste, and not in pursuit of fashion and catchy names (although there are many of them here!). The basis is made up of domestic masters of different years, from the turn of the century to the present day, but there are examples of works by brilliant foreign authors.

The exposition is divided into four semantic parts. The first is the space “City” with the atmosphere of the metropolis and everything that is peculiar to it: the speed that captures us near the work “Heaven” by Olga Soldatova, I want to run after my marathon mother with a stroller in her hands, who became the heroine of “Vasilyevsky Descent” by Kirill Kipyatkov, drive to the subway on an electric scooter, which we will “hijack” from the painting by Kirill Chelyushkin, left without a name... But as soon as we “go down” into the subway, we see how our train has already left along with the passengers of the “Forest” Irina Korina. That’s where we remember that even in the high temperature of a big city, at least sometimes slowing down is simply necessary. The concept of the exhibition only supports us in this, helping us to make a journey from the external bustling world to the quiet inner one.

The second hall, “Memories of the Future”, takes us outside the city, into a nostalgic world with windows of an old house of the 1970s, where in every window we see as if the eternal Tsvetaevsky “... window where they do not sleep again”. Lovely and sometimes even ironic dialogues of the past and the future are built from the canvases of modern masters Igor Shelkovsky, Pavel Pepperstein and others who remember the past, being in the present, which was then still the future. Someone will plunge into these walls in the memories of youth, and for someone it will be the world of childhood, which logically flows into the next hall - "House".

The exterior house is a world of safety, warmth, parental protection, which is reminiscent of Pablo Picasso’s graphic works “Mother and Child”, “Women’s Portrait” by Anatoly Zverev – collective, everyone will find their association in it – for whom mother, for whom grandmother, for whom sister... “Still Life with Floxes” by Alexander Deineka, “Fruit Garden in the Snow” by Pyotr Konchalovsky will reinforce the feeling of coziness. And the inner house – peace and the opportunity to be close to loved ones and live in harmony with yourself and the world around, what today suddenly became known as quiet luxury. In the world of well-being and simple joys, creating the same feeling at home, immerses Anna Belan, an atmospheric couple on bicycles near the pond surrounded by gulls. So I want to take a photo of this picture and send a loved one with the caption: "I want it to be us.".

Finally, the final hall "Garden / Forest", where together with modern masters we have to hide from the bustle of the city, with which we began the journey through the exhibition, find your tree, which will want to embrace and feel the very life around and inside. Breathe in full air filled with oxygen and swirl between the atmospheric works of our contemporaries.