Moscow Art Nouveau Era

Art Nouveau is an ambivalent and controversial movement on the timeline of Russian art. It amazed its contemporaries with its unconventional artistic solutions and conveyed the new spirit of its time. The exhibition itself is a stunning panorama of Russian Art Nouveau and its many faces. This panorama includes the movement’s history since the mid-19th century till the October Revolution. We start from the period of eclecticism, which is the precursor of Art Nouveau. The blueprints of State Department Store, sketches of Moscow City Duma and even Konstantin Thon’s mockup of Cathedral of Christ the Savior dome — it’s all here. The major part of the exposition dwells upon town houses, tenement houses, business properties, banks, museums, theaters and cathedrals.
The key features of the exhibition design are the ones of Art Nouveau. Its flexibility and constructibility were possible due to the widespread use of steel concrete. Concrete is the major material we used. Steel gratings and concrete podiums laconically frame the colorful artworks — just the way new concrete buildings framed the face of ever new Moscow.