One of the world's largest art galleries, located in Moscow, and housing exhibits of Russian painting and sculpture from the 11th-c to the present. The museum building was designed by Viktor M Vasnetsov (18481926) and erected in 19012; the gallery passed into state ownership in 1918. Because of lack of space to house the 50 000 exhibits, a new gallery is presently under construction.
The State Tretyakov Gallery is the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.
The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Moscow merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov (1832-98) acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection, which might later grow into a museum of national art.
The façade of the gallery building was designed by the painter Viktor Vasnetsov in a peculiar Russian fairy-tale style.
The collection contains more than 130,000 exhibits, ranging from Theotokos of Vladimir and Andrei Rublev's Trinity to the monumental Composition VII by Wassily Kandinsky and the Black Square of Kazimir Malevich.
User Comments Add a comment…