Displaying items by tag: state russian museum

Russia has blocked Sweden from borrowing Marc Chagall paintings for an upcoming exhibition of the artist's work, the Millesgarden Museum in Stockholm said Thursday, following a diplomatic dispute between the two countries.

Museum curator Onita Wass told AFP that the museum has been forced to cancel the exhibition of 48 works by French-Russian artist Chagall and several of his contemporaries. 

"We worked in cooperation with the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg to put together an exhibition on Marc Chagall and the Russia of his time, but the culture ministry didn't permit us to borrow the works... forcing us to cancel the exhibition," said Wass.

For the past 15 years, Málaga, the birthplace of Pablo Picasso, has pushed to promote its connection to the great painter, as part of its efforts to turn itself into an arts center.

Now, the cultural ambitions of this southern Spanish city are taking on a new dimension, spearheaded by its longstanding mayor, who persuaded two prestigious museums to add here their first overseas offshoots: the Pompidou Center from Paris and the State Russian Museum from Saint Petersburg.

The Málaga branch of the Russian Museum was to be inaugurated on Wednesday, three days before the opening of the so-called Pop-Up Pompidou.

Works by Kandinsky, Chagall and Malevich are due to travel from Russia to Spain for the opening of Malaga’s State Russian Museum this March. The first European branch of the St. Petersburg institution is due to be housed in a former tobacco factory in the southern Spanish city.

The inaugural display, “Russian Art of the XV-XX centuries”, traces a path of the country’s art history through 100 works, beginning with Russian icons from the end of the Middle Ages to Modernism and concluding with Soviet Realism. The director of the Russian State Museum, Vladimir Gusev, told "El Diario Sur" in an interview: “we want to break the stereotypes of Russian art.”