State Russian Museum features Mikhail Kozlovsky

Wednesday, 26 September 2007 22:45

St. Petersburg, Russia - On September 27, 2007 the State Russian Museum opens the exhibition of Mikhail Kozlovsky (1753 - 1802) in the Mikhailovsky Palace. The exhibition comprises sculpture and graphic art of the famous master of the late 18^th century. The oeuvre of Mikhai Kozlovsky is inseparably linked with the epoch of Classicism which is often called “the golden age of Russian sculpture”.

In the last decade of the eighteenth century the gifted graduates of the Imperial Academy of Arts - F. Gordeev, I. Martos, M. Kozlovsky, F. Shubin, F. Schedrin - became professors of the sculptural class of the Academy and formed a whole galaxy of outstanding masters who worked in the field of monumental and easel plastics. The inspired and manifold artistic talent of Kozlovsky was appreciated by his contemporaries who used to compare him to Michelangelo. “The adherent of Phidias, Russian Buonarot”| became famous for the surviving to this day monument to generalissimo Alexander Suvorov erected in St Petersburg on the Field of Mars in 1801, Samson Tearing Apart the Jaws of a Lion fountain composition which decorated the Grand Cascade in Peterhof in 1802, the marble statues and terracotta studies stored in the Imperial and private collections, in the collection of the artillery general A. Korsakov primarily.

Most of the surviving works by Kozlovsky currently belong to the Russian Museum. The famous statues created in the 1790s which have found their place in the history of national art - Vigil of Alexander the Great, Catherine II as Themis, Cupid, Hymen - are traditionally exhibited on the Main Staircase of the Mikhailovsky Palace. No less known are the works by the sculptor displayed in two rooms of the exhibition. Differing in character, message and plastic treatment they reveal a wide spectrum of creative quests and potential of Kozlovsky: Jacob Dolgorukov is noted for its heroicized pathos of devoting life to the service of the country, crucified Polykrates for dramatic tension; no less expressive are the idyllic motifs embodied in Apollo and Psyche.

Over sixty drawings by Kozlovsky have survived. Almost all of them are stored in the Russian Museum. The exhibition manifests various facets of the master’s graphic heritage. Here on display are his drawings of the models, made in the 1770s during his trip to Rome as a pensioner, the multi-figured compositions reflecting his close familiarity with the art of antiquity and the Renaissance.

 The indisputable merits of Kozlovsky’s graphic works are defined by his good schooling, peculiarities of plastic thinking and rich stylistic gamut. They reveal both baroque reminiscences

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/