09 august – 03 november
The All-Russian Decorative Art Museum is glad to present for the first time a large-scale exhibition of Soviet-era carpets from its own collection. The seven halls of the museum present the key themes and motifs of Soviet carpet weaving related to the construction of a new worldview of common happiness: labour, family, industry, open-space, agriculture, military exploits, and new everyday life.
"Preparations for this exhibition have been going on for several years. The exhibition project includes magnificent samples of our collection – the gift and parade carpets. Many of them took part in international exhibitions, representing the work of the best Soviet masters. Professional artists from the Institute of Art Industry gave new meaning to traditional folk motifs, turning carpets into reflections of new ideals and happy stories. Alongside with rare samples, you will also see solutions for mass production that became part of the new everyday Soviet life," says Elena Titova, director of the All-Russian Decorative Arts Museum.
A significant part of the carpets was created in the 1930s-1980s in the traditional carpet weaving centres of Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. You will see the masterpiece "Horn of Plenty" woven by Kursk craftswomen specially for the exhibition in New York (1939). The famous Turkmen carpet "Horse Run" (1937), dedicated to the passage of Turkmen horses on the route Ashgabat - Moscow. The fascinating Omsk carpet-map "Irtysh" (1959), dedicated to the development of Siberia, as well as the best samples of mass production, in particular, the first children's carpets of the 60s and 70s (Sudja, Kursk region), in the geometry of which the symbols of Soviet childhood were inscribed.
A special place in the exposition is occupied by the carpet "Moscow is being built", which was created in 1967 by a remarkable artist Pavel Stashkov, a leading specialist of the carpet weaving workshop of the Institute of Art Industry. This carpet is a real text that tells about Moscow of the epoch of big construction of the 1960s. It is a single ornamental sign that brings together the Kremlin, the Bolshoi Theatre with the white geometry of new buildings, with "belts" of water and car traffic, with the metro, the Gagarin monument, and construction cranes. This is the New Moscow - the forerunner of our present one in terms of the scale of tasks, in terms of the power of mastering human flows and speeds. We show our carpet as an example of brilliant work on creating a unified sign of the new city in mass culture.
The Carpet of Stories exhibition will feature sketches by Soviet artists from the Institute of Art Industry for the first time, and the exhibition will conclude with a look at all stages of carpet creation: Horn of Plenty (1937) and Winter (1960).
Visitors are offered an extensive educational and entertainment programme: guided tours, lectures on the history of carpet weaving, ornamentation and design, interactive quests for different age groups, public discussions with experts, Russian designers and representatives of the textile industry, film screenings on the creation and history of carpet art. We will touch the mystery of creativity, see with what skill in the language and technique of carpet weaving any theme is processed, up to the ornamental vision of entire cities.
The exhibition is realised within the framework of the project "Carpet of Stories. Traditions for the Future" with the use of a grant provided by the NGO "Russian Culture Foundation" within the framework of the federal project "Creative People" of the national project "Culture".