The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts opens the exhibition "Beatrisa Sandomirskaya. 1894–1974" – the first exhibition in 60 years dedicated to the work of this outstanding sculptor. The exhibition will bring together works from museum collections in Russia and Armenia and place Sandomirskaya's legacy within the context of world art.
 
Sandomirskaya's figurative language was shaped by the influence of the Russian school of sculpture. However, she considered her mentors not only Sergey Volnukhin and Sergey Konenkov, but also Kazimir Malevich. Sandomirskaya's monument to Robespierre became one of the most discussed monuments in the early years of Soviet power. Beatrisa Yuryevna organized the State Free Art Workshops (SFAW) in Orenburg and Turkestan and participated in the activities of the Society of Russian Sculptors (ORS).

The distinctiveness of Sandomirskaya's work is largely due to her deep immersion in global artistic processes. She studied the Russian plastic tradition and was fascinated by Cubism, primitivism, and African sculpture – but her own work can confidently be called a distinct plastic version of modernism.

Sculptor Beatrisa Sandomirskaya loved working with wood above all else. She thoroughly explored its potential and wasn't afraid to experiment with this material. Reflecting on the "architectonic and monumental qualities of wood," she dreamed of using it in "the exterior and interior design of buildings," a new "strong, monumental, bold, and profoundly ideological style."

The exhibition aims not only to reveal the scale and diversity of Sandomirskaya's legacy, but also, through the means of exhibition dramaturgy and strict, precise architecture, to express the master's fundamental artistic vision and worldview. The exhibition is structured around several archetypal motifs that emerged in Sandomirskaya's work throughout her life.

The halls feature the cubist Compositional Portrait (1921; Russian Museum), the expressive composition Head in Iron (1924; Tula Museum of Fine Arts), the monumental sculpture Oktyabrenok (1924; Tretyakov Gallery), the life-size sculpture Motherhood. Black Soil (1929; Russian Museum), which Sandomirskaya considered her greatest achievement, as well as other works from the 1920s to 1960s. A special space is devoted to drawings from various years.

Alongside Sandomirskaya's works, works from the collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts are on display, clearly demonstrating the exhibition's heroine's connection to the art of other nations and eras. These include paintings by European modernist artists and sculpture from African countries.

While Sandomirskaya's legacy remains less well-known to the general public than that of other Russian avant-garde artists, the originality of her artistic language allows her work to be considered on par with the greatest phenomena of 20th century art.

Participants in the project include:

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the P.M. Dogadin Astrakhan State Art Gallery, the Bryansk Regional Art Museum and Exhibition Center, the Vologda Regional Art Gallery, the Historical Museum, the Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the V.P. Sukachev Irkutsk Regional Art Museum, the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts, the S.D. Erzya Mordovian Republican Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Karelia, the Perm State Art Gallery, the Samara Regional Art Museum, the Tula Museum Association (branch – the Tula Museum of Fine Arts), the State Museum Association "Artistic Culture of the Russian North" (Arkhangelsk), the Yaroslavl Art Museum, the National Gallery of Armenia, and private collectors.

Text and photos: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

Flames destroy

My dry life,

And now I am not a stone,

But a tree I sing...

Osip Mandelstam. 1914

The expression "Amazons of the avant-garde" was coined by poet and critic Benedikt Livshits in his book The One-and-a-Half-Eyed Archer back in 1933. But it became a permanent definition after an exhibition of the same name, which took place from 1999 to 2001 in several museums around the world, including the State Tretyakov Gallery. The artists portrayed as Amazons of the Russian avant-garde at that time included Natalia Goncharova, Olga Rozanova, Alexandra Exter, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Lyubov Popova, and Varvara Stepanova.

The sculptor Beatrisa Sandomirskaya is no less a master, her works a distinct and vibrant version of modernism. But for me, she evokes not an Amazon, but a different mythological creature: a caryatid – a supporting figure. It was fate, during the most difficult decades, when most Russian experimental sculptors were forced to turn to thematically engaged academicism, that she maintained the level of sculptural exploration achieved by Russian art in the first decades of the 20th century.

Sandomirskaia maintained her core qualities – inflexibility and loyalty to her chosen path – throughout her long creative life. She always strived to realize her full potential.

Unlike her contemporaries Anna Golubkina, Vera Mukhina, and Nadezhda Krandievskaya, she did not study in Paris at the Académie Colarossi or the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. She refracted Cubism and primitivism through the lens of the complex and multifaceted school of sculpture that had emerged in Russia.

Her monument to Robespierre was one of the earliest works created as part of Lenin's plan for monumental propaganda. She organized the State Free Art Workshops (SFAW) in Orenburg and Turkestan and participated in the activities of the Society of Russian Sculptors (SRS).

But, remaining a working Soviet sculptor for five decades, she measured time by her own clock. Her creative evolution depended not on external circumstances, but on the inner foundations she discovered in the early 1920s.

Beatrisa Sandomirskaya's only solo exhibition took place in 1966. Our exhibition aims not only to reveal the scale and diversity of her legacy to the public but also, through the means of exhibition dramaturgy, to express the key qualities of the sculptor's artistic thinking and worldview. Therefore, we have abandoned chronological principles in favor of an archetypal approach. Art historian Igor Smekalov has restored the original titles of some works and clarified the dates of their creation (they are listed on the labels alongside information provided by the participating museums).

The exhibition opens with the 1921 work Composition Portrait. It serves as an epigraph to the explorations of the first half of the 1920s. The next room features monumental "Heads", which clearly demonstrate a primitivizing approach to form. Next, the viewer encounters the archetype of "Woman", also associated with a return to the artist's roots – the archaic, the African primitive.

The space combines works by Russian sculptor Beatrisa Sandomirskaya, paintings by prominent Western artists, and African sculpture. This is typical of Sandomirskaya: she draws from multiple sources, synthesizing diverse principles.

Her artistic personality, noted above, was characterized by a strong sense of resilience. She, in turn, firmly relied on the organic nature of her favorite material – wood.

Works of different eras, with different social implications, distinct in language… But the fullness of form remains supreme, no allowances for time, absolute emotional dedication. And so it is, right up until the latest works!

Alla Esipovich-Roginskaya