AN OUTPOST of the Russian State Museum in Saint Petersburg is due to open in Málaga just two days before the red tape is cut on the Costa del Sol branch of Paris' Centre Pompidou in March.
Five centuries of Russian art from Mediaeval icons through to surrealist painters such as Kandinsky, Chagall and Malevich will be on display permanently in the old Tabacalera building, with three different exhibitions per year.
The contract with the 'original' State Museum of Russian Art, led by director-general Vladimir Gusev, runs for 10 years but will hopefully be renewed in 2025.
To celebrate the gallery's grand opening, the first exhibition will be of Russian art from the 15th to 20th century and feature 100 or so works, on display all year.
They will cover the period from the Middle Ages through to the Soviet era, with a sample selection of paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, Alexey Venetsianov, Carl Brulov, Alexander Ivanov, Isaak Levitan, Vassily Vereschagin, Ilja Repin, Peter Konchalovsky, Tatlin, Olga Rosanova, Marc Chagall, Alexander Rodchenko, Nathan Altman, Pável Filonov, Kazimir Malevitch and Alexander Deineka.
A temporary exhibition running from March to September this year will be on Sergei Diaghilev, said to be the founder of the Russian Ballet and a great friend of Málaga-born surrealist painter Pablo Picasso, featuring stage designs, sculptures and figurines as well as paintings by Bakst, Vrubel, Golovin, Goncharova, Levitan and Larionov.
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