The exhibition features artists who contributed to Serge Diaghilev's Saisons Russes (Russian Seasons). This project is a special one as it brings together many different arts, Kees van Twist, Director of Groningen's Fine Art Museum, told RIA Novosti.
A Diaghilev festival is forthcoming next January, to introduce Dutch audiences to opera and ballet highlights of the impresario's famous Saisons Russes.
The exhibition "Serving Diaghilev," to run through March 28, 2005, shows over 230 paintings, etchings, drawings, costumes, and set designs by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Giorgio de Chirico, Nikolai Roerich, Leon Bakst, Alexandre Benois, Alexander Golovin, Valentin Serov, Konstantin Somov, Mikhail Vrubel, Viktor Borisov-Musatov, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, and Zinaida Serebryakova.
The works on display have been brought in from Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery and Bakhrushin Theatrical Arts Museum, St. Petersburg's Theater and Music Museum, London's Victoria and Albert Museum and Theater Museum, the National Gallery of Canberra, Paris' George Pompidou Center and Picasso Museum, New York's Metropolitan, art museums of the U.S. cities of San Antonio and Hartford, as well as from private collections.
According to Mr. Twist, the exhibition is a rare treat as the works it features aren't always accessible to the general public. After its closure, the drawings by Picasso, Benois, Bakst, Serov, Goncharova, Larionov and other artists will again get locked in museum repositories.
The exhibition and the festival are fruits of successful cooperation between the Groningen Museum and art museums of Russia, Mr. van Twist said. "Our museum even plays the role of a bridge to other foreign museums," he said. "For instance, the exhibition 'Russian Landscape' staged here last year then traveled on to London. Officials from Austrian museums came in to visit a couple of days ago; they were greatly impressed by the exhibition and even expressed their desire to develop equally fruitful ties with Russian counterparts," Mr. van Twist told RIA Novosti.
"I am proud that here, at the Groningen Museum, we have an opportunity to show priceless artworks from Russia to Western European art-lovers," he added.
