The Artifact exhibition space invites viewers to the Mirror of the Soul exhibition, which will feature portrait works by major Russian painters of the XIX–XX centuries.
The exhibition will feature more than 50 paintings and graphic works of the portrait genre: the originals of Vladimir Borovikovsky, Ilya Repin, Konstantin Makovsky, Boris Kustodiev, Zinaida Serebryakova and other masters. Many paintings will be available for public viewing for the first time.
According to the organizers, the portrait is a unique genre of Russian art, especially significant for Russian culture. In Russian painting, he was the first to form an independent genre – starting with an icon, moving on to a parsuna and ending with a portrait as we know it now. Portraits have a prominent role in the entire art industry: it is the works of this genre that are the most expensive and popular exhibits of auctions and galleries. We all remember da Vinci’s “Gioconda”, Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, Kramskoy’s “Unknown”.
Indeed, there is something extraordinary and catchy in the portraits that makes them fascinate the audience and remain in the public consciousness for a long time. Moreover, the portrait can be called one of the most difficult genres, because the transfer of the human image, which includes not so much appearance as aura and emotion, is a task that only truly talented authors can cope with.
«…More than ever before, I realized in Haarlem that the highest art is the art of portraiture, that the task of a landscape sketch, no matter how captivating, is a trifling task compared to the complex complex of human appearance, with its thoughts, feelings and experiences reflected in the eyes, smile, wrinkled brow, head movement, gesture hands. How much more fascinating and infinitely more difficult it all is!” – this is how the Russian painter and restorer Igor Grabar reflects on the portraits.

• Портрет княгини Екатерины Алексеевны Долгорукой (Боровиковский):
So, in order to create an outstanding work of the portrait genre, the artist works with the smallest movements of facial expressions and body, skillfully creating certain emotions, deftly conveying feelings and immersing the viewer in them. When working with a portrait, the painter takes into account countless details, each of which becomes a tiny fragment in a large “mirror” of the portrait. The complexity of the visual and technical side of the portrait is the most interesting feature of this genre.
No less exciting in the “portrait” theme is how each artist sees a portrait: who he uses as a nature, what mood he conveys and what techniques he uses. Looking at the works of great painters, viewers can appreciate how the authors approach the transfer of the inner world, similarities with the model, personal and national character. The variety of creative vision in this genre creates an interesting base for the study of portrait art and painting in general.

• Портрет Шаляпина (Кустодиев):
“Each epoch distinguished its own specific qualities in the image of a person, created an idea of a personality in which the ideal of the epoch was expressed. The pictorial image invariably conveys the key ideas and values of its time. Despite the fact that the person in the portrait is usually silent, this silence is eloquent. And it often seems that not only the viewer stares intently at the image on the canvas, but also the face from the painting seems to invite us to a dialogue,” the gallery’s website writes.

• За туалетом. Автопортрет (Серебрякова):
Another outstanding feature of the portrait genre is how he is able to address the audience, conveying the mood, feelings and energy of various people and their eras. A portrait can “transfer” not only to the past, but also to someone else’s consciousness: immersed in a portrait for real, we are able to see the sitter, the era and the world with the artist’s sharp eye, hear his voice and find out his opinion without touching written texts and archives. Such figurative-sensory cognition is especially exciting, because it is able to communicate with the viewer on his wave and empirically transmit the information that neither guides nor encyclopedias will tell him about.
The variety, complexity, depth and strength of portrait works will be appreciated by the guests of the Mirror of the Soul exhibition. The exhibition will be held until July 9 from 11:00 to 20:00 on weekdays, and from 12:00 to 20:00 on weekends. More information about the exhibition can be found on the website.