Community Talk

Last year my sister invited me to the National Arts Museum to see the exhibition of paintings from Tretyakov Gallery. It was a special project between two museums and a great opportunity for Minsk citizens to see masterpieces from Tretyakov Gallery without visiting Moscow. At that exhibition one painting caught my attention. It was Arkhip Kuindzhi`s “Birch grove”, 1879. It was something unusual in the painting. Bright colors and illusion of lighting made it different from other landscape paintings.

Since that time I started reading and learning about Arkhip Kuindzhi and his paintings. This summer I visited Kuindzhi`s flat-museum during my trip to Saint Petersburg. It gave me a lot of impressions and insight into the artist`s life.

Arkhip Kuindzhi lived between 1841 and 1910 in Russia. His special painting technique was unique in that time. A lot of people did not believe that paintings could be so bright and illuminating. Some exhibition visitors even tried to find secret lamp or candle hidden behind the paintings. His contemporaries called him the “moonlight and sunlight master”. Some newspapers wrote that he was hiring the Moon and the Sun themselves to mix paints for his works.

Most of Kuindzhi`s paintings are exhibited in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the State Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg. But there is one of his works in our National Arts Museum too. It is “Birch grove”, 1901. I invite everybody to the museum to meet that beautiful piece of art.