Tretyakov Gallery, Russian Icons & Gorky Park
The Tretyakov Gallery (Tretyakovskaya Galereya — founded 1856 by merchant Pavel Tretyakov, opened to the public 1892, donated to the city of Moscow 1892 — housing approximately 180,000 works of Russian art from the 11th century to the present) is the world's premier collection of Russian fine art, containing the defining works of every major movement in Russian painting from medieval icons to the avant-garde — in the Zamoskvorechye neighbourhood south of the Kremlin.
- 1
Tretyakov Gallery — 180,000 Works of Russian Art
Tretyakov Gallery (Lavrushinsky Lane, Zamoskvorechye — the main building of the gallery, designed by architect Viktor Vasnetsov in the Old Russian Revival style 1902-1904, with the distinctive fairy-tale facade of red brick with carved stone details and the mosaic icon of Saint George above the entrance): Pavel Tretyakov (1832-1898, Moscow textile merchant) began collecting Russian art in 1856 with the explicit intention of assembling 'a collection of national significance' and donating it to the public; by the time of his death, the collection comprised 1,287 paintings, 518 drawings, and 9 sculptures; the most celebrated works in the collection include: Ilya Repin's 'Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan' (1885, Room 30), 'The Volga Barge Haulers' (1870-1873), and 'Religious Procession in Kursk Province' (1880-1883); Vasily Surikov's 'Morning of the Streltsy Execution' (1881) and 'Boyarynya Morozova' (1887); the landscape paintings of Alexei Savrasov, Ivan Shishkin, and Isaak Levitan; the medieval icon hall (Room 60) with Andrei Rublev's Trinity icon (c. 1411 — the supreme masterpiece of Russian medieval art).
- 2
The Icon Hall — Rublev's Trinity & Medieval Russian Art
Icon Hall, Tretyakov Gallery (Rooms 56-62, ground floor — the display of the Tretyakov's extraordinary collection of Russian icons spanning the 11th-17th centuries, the finest collection of Russian medieval religious art in the world): the centrepiece of the icon hall is Andrei Rublev's Trinity icon (Troitsa, c. 1411 — the most revered icon in Russian Orthodox Christianity, painted by the monk-artist Andrei Rublev at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra monastery in Sergiev Posad to honour the memory of Sergius of Radonezh, depicting the three angels who appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre (Genesis 18) as a representation of the Holy Trinity, with the three figures arranged in a perfect circle of contemplative stillness and mutual love); other key works in the icon collection include the 12th-century 'Our Lady of Vladimir' (Vladimirskaya Bogomater, the most sacred icon in Russia, brought from Byzantium circa 1131 and venerated as the protector of Russia throughout the medieval period) and the 15th-century Novgorod school icons with their distinctive linear style and vivid red-and-white colours.
- 3
New Tretyakov Gallery — Russian Avant-Garde & Soviet Art
New Tretyakov Gallery (Novaya Tretyakovskaya Galereya — Krymsky Val, the second major building of the Tretyakov collection, built 1986, housing Russian art of the 20th and 21st centuries): the New Tretyakov contains the most important collection of Russian avant-garde art in the world — the movements that defined the most radical phase of modern art (1905-1932): Suprematism (Kazimir Malevich's 'Black Square' (1915), the most important single painting of the Russian avant-garde, and the white-on-white 'Suprematist Composition: White on White' (1918)), Constructivism (Alexander Rodchenko's photomontages and spatial constructions), Rayonism (Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova), and the early figurative paintings of Marc Chagall, Vasily Kandinsky, and Robert Falk; the collection continues through the Socialist Realist period (officially mandated Soviet art, 1932-1991) with its monumental canvases of heroic workers, Lenin portraits, and scenes of Soviet everyday life.
- 4
Gorky Park — Soviet Leisure Culture on the Moscow River
Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure (Tsentralny Park Kultury i Otdykha imeni Gorkogo — the 119-hectare public park on the banks of the Moscow River in the Zamoskvorechye district, established 1928 as the first Soviet public park, named after the writer Maxim Gorky): Gorky Park was designed as the Soviet ideal of public leisure — a place for workers to enjoy culture, sport, and entertainment in organized collective activities — and at its peak in the 1930s-1960s attracted up to 300,000 visitors on summer weekends; the park was substantially redesigned and upgraded in 2011-2013 under the Moscow Mayor's initiative, removing the Soviet-era amusement rides and replacing them with bicycle paths, open-air reading rooms, Wi-Fi, food courts, beach volleyball, and yoga platforms; today Gorky Park is one of the most attractive urban parks in Europe, with a riverside embankment promenade, outdoor cinema, skating rink (winter), and the adjacent Muzeon Park of Arts (open-air sculpture park containing hundreds of Soviet-era bronze statues removed from Moscow streets and squares after 1991, including statues of Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, and other Soviet figures).
- 5
Zamoskvorechye — Old Moscow Merchant District
Zamoskvorechye (the neighbourhood 'across the Moscow River' — the area directly south of the Kremlin on the opposite bank of the Moscow River, historically the district of Moscow merchants and artisans and now one of the most attractive historic neighbourhoods in central Moscow for walking, with its abundance of 18th-19th century merchant mansions, small Orthodox churches, and old linden-tree lined streets): the most significant surviving examples of pre-revolutionary Moscow merchant architecture are concentrated in Zamoskvorechye — including the coloured mansions of Pyatnitskaya Street (the main commercial artery of old merchant Moscow), the trading rows of Ordynka Street, and the Convent of Martha and Mary (Marfo-Mariinskaya Obitel — the religious and charitable community founded 1909 by Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, sister of Empress Alexandra, after the assassination of her husband Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich; the convent church (1908-1912) is one of the finest works of architect Alexei Shchusev, in the Neo-Russian style).
- 6
Muzeon Open-Air Sculpture Park — Soviet Monuments after the Fall
Muzeon Park of Arts (Muzeon — the open-air sculpture park on the embankment of the Moscow River adjacent to Gorky Park, established 1992 in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet collapse as a repository for Soviet-era monumental sculpture removed from Moscow's streets and public spaces): the park contains approximately 700 sculptures, the most historically significant of which are the removed Soviet monuments — the massive bronze statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky (founder of the Cheka secret police, the forerunner of the KGB) that was toppled from its base outside the Lubyanka headquarters of the KGB on August 22, 1991 in the immediate aftermath of the failed coup attempt, multiple statues of Stalin (removed from their pedestals after Khrushchev's 1956 'secret speech' denouncing Stalin's cult of personality), statues of Lenin, Sverdlov, and other Soviet leaders, and socialist-realist monumental sculptures of heroic workers, soldiers, and athletes; the park also displays contemporary Russian sculpture alongside the Soviet material.