Family album. Korovin-Nechitailo

The exhibition "Family Album" presents works by three generations of the Korovin and Nechitailo family of artists. These are paintings, graphics, including autolithography, and decorative and applied art (glass). On the one hand, the exhibits reveal an important, very personal theme of the family, and on the other hand, they show the creative individuality and skill of each artist, the problems and stylistic searches of different generations, demonstrating the changes in the national art for more than half a century: the earliest work at the exhibition is dated 1940, the latest - 2023. 1972), Vasily Kirillovich Nechitailo (1915-1980), Maria Vladimirovna Savchenkova (1917-2017), Dmitry Vasilyevich Nechitailo (born 1938), Ksenia Vasilyevna Nechitailo (1942-2019), Sergey Vasilyevich Nechitailo (born 1952), Vasilisa Sergeevna Nechitailo (born 1980).

The exhibition "Family Album" includes more than 50 works - portraits, landscapes, genre scenes, made in different techniques and stylistic directions - from realism to abstraction. At the exhibition there is no emphasized boundary denoting the unconditional difference between the two artistic worlds, and there are no attempts to reveal and show the undoubted similarity. Antonina Korovina's airy watercolor sketches from nature echo the glass objects of her granddaughter Anastasia, full of light. Delicate, light in color works by Maria Savchenkova are juxtaposed with rich, textured works by her son Dmitry. The recognizable author's style of artist Ksenia Nechitailo is in dialogue with her niece Vasilisa's painterly searches. Juvenaly Korovin's relaxed drawings find a common language with impressionistic studies for program works by Vasily Nechitailo.

Although the Korovins and Nechitailo share a relatively young common ancestry, they are united by a socio-cultural context and values that have been passed down from generation to generation. As in any family - not necessarily a creative one - it is pluralism that is interesting. In this case, it is the pluralism of themes, styles and directions within the family profession, which says more about the family itself and the individuals than it does about the art. A family history spanning more than one decade is always a narrative, not necessarily first-person and with a single narrator, not always exhaustive - with a beginning and an end, with a sequence of dates and events. It is a multi-voiced narrative, where everyone has his or her own view, his or her own intimate memory of an incident or a loved one.

Additional material for the exhibition helps the viewer to navigate through this diversity - a family tree, biographical guide and colorful etiquette tell about the exhibition's heroes and their connections with each other. The photographs, collected in an analog album and presented in the digital format that has already become customary, show not famous artists, but ordinary people in significant and everyday moments of their lives. The exhibition is illustrated by texts: spontaneous stories told as if by chance, or, on the contrary, important, professional discussions, funny or sad memories, very personal statements (quotations from letters) or public ones (excerpts from interviews or articles). Such extensive information support will help the viewer to feel like a guest of the large Korovin and Nechitailo family and to see not only the works of art, but also the people who created them.