The Russian Academy Of Arts

The exhibition shows the history of contemporary art in the light of one of the biggest private collections of contemporary Russian art. Curated by Sergei Popov, it presents over one hundred works by several generations of artists from the collection of the Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts, collector and patron of art Victor Bondarenko. Among the artists represented in his collection are all key figures of contemporary Russian art including Oscar Rabin, Vladimir Nemukhin, Michael Shwartsman, Eric Bulatov, Ilya Kobakov, Ernst Neizvestny, Dmitry Gutov, Alexander Kosolapov, Oleg Kulik and others.

However, the circle of Bondarenko’s interests is not limited only by renowned artists. His collection covers a wide range of contemporary art, its various trends, areas and media. It includes chamber painting of artists of diverse directions, program canvases and objects of masters who have made a core of the “Moscow conceptual school”, works by classics of Soviet Pop Art, paintings of post-modernism and photorealism, works by leading figures of post-Soviet period. Victor Bondarenko is also a far-sighted collector of works by distinguished young talents.

Victor Bondarenko is of major interest because he is the most recognized collector of icons and simultaneously acts as a producer of projects in the area of new technologies in fine arts. Works from his collections have been frequently exhibited in group and solo exhibitions, but the collection as a whole has never been displayed to the public.

Visitors of the show can buy a catalogue of the exhibition and a book on the history of contemporary Russian art basing on Victor Bondarenko’s collection.

The exhibition has been timed to the international research conference to deal with the academic investigation of a broad range of problems of contemporary Russian art and its interaction with the world art practices. The conference is an opportunity to involve into the discussion researchers of various art institutions, museum workers, recognized art historians and curators, specialists in Russian art from other countries, young art critics. Simultaneously with the exposition in Gogolevsky Boulevard, Bondarenko’s collection of icons will be on show at the Andrei Rublev Museum of Ancient Russian Art in Moscow.

Victor Bondarenko was born in Kharkov on April 22, 1950. He is a publisher, entrepreneur, collector and patron of art, a founder of publishing houses “Passport International” and “Military Parade”, organizer of the show “Russian Art of the 20th Century: Years of Avant-Garde and Years of Glastnost” in the Museum of Nassau County (the United States, 1992; in association with the Russian Culture Foundation). He was one of the curators and a sponsor-general of the exhibition “The World of Sensual Things in Pictures – the Late 20th Century” in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, 1997). Victor Bondarenko owns one of the best in Russia collections of Orthodox icons. He has organized a number of major exhibitions of Russian icons (“The Tree is Recognized by Fruits”, 2003, the State Tretaykov Gallery; “Icon Painting in the Time of the Romanov Dynasty”, 2008, the State Tretyakov Gallery) and contemporary art including the DEISIS project in the State Tretyakov Gallery in 2004. He lives and works in Moscow.

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