"Folk icon" exhibition

"Folk icon" exhibition at Zurab Tsereteli art gallery until 16 September. 

Last year there were two exhibitions of folk icons - at the Museum complex in the Vyatka village of Yaroslavl Region and at the State Historical and Architectural Museum of Art in Kirill-Belozersky monastery, which caused, in spite of their small scale, huge interest among the audience and professionals.

As part of the exhibition in Moscow are displayed about 400 exhibits from more than 30 collections. The exhibits are shown by the State Scientific-Research Institute for Restoration, Yaroslavl State Historical and Architectural Museum, the Archaeological Museum of Church of the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University, prominent collectors of works of ancient art Yevgeny Roizman, Alexander Ilyin, Vyacheslav Momot, Mikhail Chernov and many others.

Cultural layer fitting the definition of "folk icon" includes not only the traditional iconography of painting on a board, but the art of enamel, copper and votive pendants. The exhibition also includes items of national and religious life. All facets of this unique phenomenon of Russian culture can be seen in the halls on Prechistenka. It is difficult to overestimate the social and scientific significance of this project, the curator and head of which is a Doctor of Arts Irina Busev-Davydov, a distinguished scholar of icon painting. According to her, "traditional icon has relatively recently become the object of collecting and studying, so that there is still no common understanding of the term, there is no certainty in matters of the time of occurrence of this phenomenon, of social class and methods of creative artists, about the relationship between the concepts of 'folk', 'economically active', 'craft', 'professional', 'naive', 'primitive'. In the "village" type of icons is usually seen only a simplified version of a high-iconography, which does not have independent artistic value. However, the folk icon, no doubt, is an integral part of folk art and folk culture, which is not limited to primitivization of art and culture of the upper strata of society. Icons crested by unsophisticated 'daubers', played a huge role in the life of Russian people, reflecting the fundamental ideas of ​​the holy and beautiful'.

Address: Moscow, Prechistenka, 19

Source: Православная афиша