KARGOPOLE FOLK ART IN THE STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM

St. Petersburg, Russia - The State Russian Museum opens the “Kargopole Folk Art” exhibition in the Benois Wing of the Mikhailovsky Palace. The exhibition presents nearly 300 works - from icons by Kargopole painters of the 16^th - 18^th centuries to the works of such famous masters of clay toys of the 20^th century as Ivan Druzhinin, Ulyana Babkina and masters from the Shevelev family.  The ancient town of Kargopole with its firm white stone temples is a center of one of the most significant regions of the Russian North – Kargopole.  Like rays of the Sun old high roads branch off the city: Arkhangelsk, Pudozh, Vytegra and St Petersburg.

Not long ago a traveller observed wooden Russia along these roads and felt poetic charming of native antiquity in wooden architecture and decor of peasant houses.  In the late 19^th century the Kargopole district comprised 80 wooden churches. Majestic churches with well-shaped tents and excellent cupolas have been preserved in the natural environment of the northern territory.  The National Kenozero Park, a unique natural and cultural preserve, was created in the Kargopole district.

In the 19^th century the Kargopole district was called the “bread-basket” of the province for achieving high crops of grain.  The extra income would come from extraction of tar, fishing, hunting for squirrels and hazel-hens and salting of famous Kargopole saffron milk caps.  Apart from these everyday skills peasants wielded various kinds of folk art and decorative crafts: embroidery, patterned weaving, printed clothes, fretwork, painting on wooden, pottery and clay toys.  The residents of the Oshevensk district sewed clothes.  Inhabitants of the village of Malchino painted icons. Dwellers of the village of Vakhrushevo were engaged in pottery.  The costume of a Kargopole woman is marked by the combination of the art of golden and pearl embroidery as well as printed clothes, patterned weaving and miniature embroidery on shirtsleeves.  In the 20th century many old crafts were forgotten. The masters of clay toys Ivan Druzhinin, Ulyana Babkina and masters from the Shevelev family won recognition. Weavers started to produce beautiful mats on looms.  The Kargopole weaver P. Semyannikova told about her work: “My looms are like something joyful in my life… And fashions are numerous: from ripples on the lake to autumn in the North forest”. 

A. Gilferding recorded Russian epics, songs, legends and studied the ancient epic tradition in the villages around Kenozero in 1871.  He called the dwellers of the Olonets Region “folk rhapsodes”.  The strong folklore tradition, preserved by the masters in all spheres of art and crafts, attracted curators of numerous museums to Kargopole. In the 1960s-70s in the course of research expeditions the Russian Museum acquired more than 500 precious works of folk art.  The exhibition presents the major part of this collection.

The Kargopole Folk Art exhibition follows the tradition of demonstrating large sections from collections of departments of folk and Old Russian art in the State Russian Museum.  Kargopole is not only a geographic notion but cultural and historic as well.  An ancient town of Kargopole and the former Kargopole district of the Olonets Province (nowadays - several districts of the Archangel Region) is a kind of a preserve of folk culture.  For several centuries it had been developing traditions of icon painting, various kinds of folk art and decorative crafts - embroidery, weaving and printed cloth, clay toys, fretwork and painting on wooden domestic utensils.  Objects of folk everyday life - female festive costumes, headdresses embroidered by river pearls, headscarves with golden embroidery, towels, valances and distaffs possess remarkable artistic features, brilliance and abundance of tracery. Almost all of them were collected by the Russian Museum research expeditions in the 1960s.  Many of them are genuine masterpieces of folk art.

The State Russian Museum today is a unique depository of artistic treasures, a leading restoration center, an authoritative institute of academic research, a major educational center and the nucleus of a network of national museums of art. 

The Russian Museum collection contains circa 400.000 exhibits.  The main complex of museum buildings - the Mikhailovsky Palace and Benois Wing - houses the permanent exhibition of the Russian Museum, tracing the entire history of Russian art from the tenth to the twentieth centuries.  The museum collection embraces all forms, genres, schools and movements of art.

Visit The State Russian Museum at : http://www.rusmuseum.ru/eng/museum/