A blockbuster exhibition of the Morozov Collection, one Russia’s greatest pre-revolutionary art collections, is finally opening this week at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris after being postponed twice due to Covid-19 lockdowns.
The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art will feature 200 works from the wealthy industrialist brothers Ivan and Mikhail Morozov, online films and a 520-page catalogue. It is a sequel to the museum’s 2016 blockbuster that reunited masterpieces from the collection of the Russian businessman Sergei Shchukin and was seen by 1.2 million visitors. Like Shchukin, the Morozovs collected Impressionist and Modern art. The exhibition will include works by artists such as Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. The Morozov brothers were also deeply committed to Russian artists such as Mikhail Vrubel and Valentin Serov, so the exhibition will include significant loans from the State Tretyakov Gallery.
A version of the exhibition was held at the State Hermitage Museum in 2019. “What is extraordinary is that it’s the first time that the entire collection of the Morozov family will travel outside of Russia at this scale and with such a number of masterpieces,” says Jean-Paul Claverie, the cultural adviser to Bernard Arnault, the billionaire who opened the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2014.
The exhibition curator Anne Baldassari said earlier this month that the pandemic was still having an effect on the show, with works “arriving very slowly” at the museum. “I have one day to do the Gauguin room. The exhibition is huge: 4,000 sq. m,” she said. “We run around all day.” Baldassari’s goal is to show the revolutionary impact of the artists and the collectors. The artists at the time “were in a terrible situation,” according to Baldassari . “These Russian patrons were so dedicated to art, so open. They contributed to the revolution in Modern art.”
The Hermitage is also lending Morozov’s Music Room, with an installation of seven panel paintings by Maurice Denis, based on The Story of Psyche from Greek mythology, and four sculptures by the French sculptor Aristide Maillol. According to Mikhail Dedinkin, the deputy head of the Hermitage’s Western European Art Department, this will be the last time the room will be seen outside of Russia.
• The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 22 September-22 February 2022
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