Anna Tolstova about the exhibition of Vladimir Nemukhin and Lydia Masterkova at MMSI

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art opens the exhibition “Vladimir Nemukhin. The edges of formalism. Lydia Masterkova. Lyrical Abstraction" is the first joint retrospective in Russia of Vladimir Nemukhin and Lydia Masterkova

Lydia Masterkova. "Cathedral", 1968

Photo: Collection of Evgeny Nutovich, Moscow

Vladimir Nemukhin. "Game Table", 1961–1969

Photo: Tsukanov Family Foundation

Lydia Masterkova. "Composition in Red and Blue", 1962

Photo: Tsukanov Family Foundation. London

Vladimir Nemukhin. "Abstract Composition", 1962

Photo: Tsukanov Family Foundation. London

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Lydia Masterkova. "Abstract composition", 1963

Photo: Collection of Evgeny Nutovich, Moscow

Vladimir Nemukhin, 1974

Photo: From the archive of V. Nemukhin

Lydia Masterkova, 1975

Photo: From the archive of V. Nemukhin

Vladimir Nemukhin. "Red and Black", 2001

Photo: Private collection

Lydia Masterkova. "Cathedral", 1968

Photo: Collection of Evgeny Nutovich, Moscow

Vladimir Nemukhin. "Game Table", 1961–1969

Photo: Tsukanov Family Foundation

Lydia Masterkova. "Composition in Red and Blue", 1962

Photo: Tsukanov Family Foundation. London

Vladimir Nemukhin. "Abstract Composition", 1962

Photo: Tsukanov Family Foundation. London

The exhibition, made together with the Tsukanov Family Foundation with the support of the AVC Charity Foundation, will show works from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the Tretyakov Gallery, and private collections - primarily from the collections of Igor Tsukanov and the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation. The Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University, which houses Masterkova’s best collection, refused to participate—it turns out that boycotts by American museums hit projects related to domestic rather than foreign art the hardest.

The exhibition will unite those who separated long ago, but were together in their golden years - from the mid-1950s to the end of the 1960s: Vladimir Nemukhin (born in 1925) and Lydia Masterkova (1927-2008). Together they were part of the “Lianozov group” of artists and poets that formed around Yevgeny Kropivnitsky and his son-in-law, Oscar Rabin. Artists and poets of the outskirts, barracks existence near Moscow and the poverty of existence, marginalized in relation to Soviet artistic culture, to which they, expelled from institutions and professional associations, opposed, reconstructing it from memory or imagination, pre- and non-Soviet, which, of course, was perceived as anti-. Together they participated in the “Bulldozer Exhibition,” a desperately bold attempt by marginalized people to establish an open-air exhibition hall for a union of outcast artists. Marginal in the literal sense, outlying, built on a vacant lot in Belyaevo, the “bulldozer” is the only way Russia of the second half of the 20th century is included in the world exhibition history (unlike Russia at the beginning of the century with its “jacks of diamonds”, “donkey tails” and other " Oh, 10"). Even ten years ago it seemed that the heroes of the “bulldozer” would take their rightful place in essays on the history of art and museum exhibitions, pushing the then officialdom into notes and storage rooms. In any case, this was the program of the maximum first state collection of contemporary art, which was collected by curator Andrei Erofeev and which is now stored in the Tretyakov Gallery. But, as you know, it turned out differently. Nevertheless, Erofeev, expelled from the Tretyakov Gallery and convicted under one of the censorship articles of the Criminal Code for curatorial activities, continues to follow his line - in this case as the author of a double retrospective.

Lydia Masterkova. "Composition", 1970
Photo: Irina Stolyarova Collection, London

The curatorial idea of Andrei Erofeev is that the unofficial art of the Soviet era should be included in the global context and small history inscribed in the big one in such a way that literally every phenomenon of our underground - and not just kineticists and "Collective Actions" - has an analogue. from the exposition of the conventional Pompidou Center. In the case of Vladimir Nemukhin and Lidia Masterkova, this seems to be not so difficult. In the late 1950s, when modern Western abstract painting was shown a couple of times in Moscow, which had opened up to the world at the VI World Festival of Youth and Students in 1957, both took up lyrical abstraction. Remarkable not only and not so much for the novelty of the form - Nemukhin was expelled from Surikovka for his formalism - but for the novelty and intensity of feeling invested in their fierce struggle with the surface of the canvas. Later, both switched to the collage technique, fusing found objects into the pictorial layer: lace, rags, scraps of church embroidery, rescued from ruined and polluted churches, grew into Masterkova’s fresco textures, playing cards were decomposed into Suprematist solitaire games by Nemukhin. It would seem that to everything they did, one could indeed find some kind of Western counterpoint: outwardly, their early abstraction was similar to abstract expressionism and informel, their later collage paintings-objects were like the experiments of the “new realists” or, say, Alberto Burri with his burlap.

In 1975, Masterkova left for France, but, despite all the similarities with the Tachiists, she did not become part of the French art scene. Nemukhin lived in Germany for a long time, but integration did not happen either. In the bulky chest of drawers of the history of art of the 20th century, they, like almost all of their like-minded people, remained lying in a drawer of anti-Soviet artistic resistance that was pulled out only on occasion. What is understandable and is not at all explained by a delay or secondary nature: in their case, the interpretation machine was launched not by internal, but by external mechanisms - not artistic criticism, but the cultural politics of the Cold War. By and large, the non-political content of this art has still not been articulated, although there are plenty of themes and plots using the example of Vladimir Nemukhin and Lydia Masterkova. Mysticism or metaphysics, Masterkova’s Dante’s circles, Nemukhin’s card prophecies - after all, there was some kind of special meaning in this, not limited to just references to the intelligentsia’s search for God at the time of the next anti-church campaign. The kinship of their abstraction with the landscape, and with the Russian landscape, the Russian snowy cosmos, if we remember the winter whiteness and endless horizons, recognizable in the non-objective canvases of both artists. Their fascination with the art of the old masters and the pre-Soviet avant-garde, which can hardly be reduced to the Iron Curtain and the sweetness of forbidden fruits.

Vladimir Nemukhin. "Banks. Card games on the beach", 1989
Photo: Victor Minchin Collection, Moscow

Our experience of misunderstanding, lack of recognition and lack of inclusion is not at all unique. Abstract paintings by Tadeusz Kantor in the National Museum in Krakow, if you do not know the history of this art, may seem like some kind of eastern reflection of “light from the West” - by the way, in some places they are strikingly similar to Lianozov’s abstraction. And perhaps such painting could have remained just an artistic and political document of the era if several generations of Polish theater and art history had not worked for Kantor, explaining this art from himself - from his internal needs. Intellectual investment in the art of Masterkova and Nemukhin is still ahead. There is also a search ahead for a new coordinate system, where the American abstraction seen in Sokolniki will become just one point - no more important than, say, the legendary one - because there are more legends here than facts - the art school on Chudovka.

"Vladimir Nemukhin. Facets of formalism. Lydia Masterkova. Lyrical abstraction" . Moscow Museum of Modern Art on Gogolevsky Boulevard, from April 15 to May 31

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