A leading Soviet emigre artist charged yesterday that the exhibition of Russian paintings opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this week was a “lie” because it showed Russian art that could not be seen in the Soviet Union or was no longer permitted to be done there.
Ernst Neizvestny, regarded as the most important Soviet visual artist to quit the USSR since Kandinsky and Chagall, made the statement at a news conference and press preview of works by four Soviet Jewish artists now in the United States. The showing, described as a “counter-exhibition” to the official Soviet paintings at the Metropolitan, is sponsored by the American Jewish Congress and titled “The Art of Freedom.” It opened today at Stephen Wise Congress House.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it would be “inappropriate” for the museum to comment since the exhibit is on loan from the Soviet Union. He said the exhibit was assembled by the Soviet Ministry of Culture.
DESIGNED FOR FOREIGN CONSUMPTION
At the AJ Congress news conference, Neizvestny said the Russian paintings in the Metropolitan Museum exhibit were “designed for foreign consumption–like the stores in Moscow where foreign citizens with foreign currency can buy caviar that the people cannot.” He continued.
“The icons in the Metropolitan Museum show are beautiful, but the art of icon painting is banned and icon painting has been persecuted for decades. The paintings of the Russian renaissance proudly displayed in the Metropolitan have been condemned and vilified for decades in the USSR.
“The modern Russian paintings in the Metropolitan Museum shown under the official auspices of the Soviet Ministry of Culture are either by artists who are dead–such as Drevin, who died in a Stalin prison camp–or by living artists like Plavinsky and Kandaurov, whose works have never before been officially exhibited in the USSR. What you see in the Metropolitan is a lie.”
Neizvestny, 51, first gained international attention in 1962 following a shouting match with Nikita Khrushchev, the late Soviet Premier, at the first and last exhibition of modern art in Moscow. Neizvestny had already achieved a reputation as a sculptor of major talent. After his works were denounced by Khrushchev, the two men became friends and when the Soviet leader died, Mrs. Khrushchev commissioned him to create a monument and bust at her late husband’s tomb.
The other artists represented at the “counter-exhibition” in addition to Neizvestny are Igor Galanin, Alexander Richter and Ilya Shenker.
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