Title: 848
Description: On June 29th, 2012, the State Hermitage Museum hosted the opening of "848. The Collection of Georges Matcheret and Nadia Wolkonsky." This exhibit, which includes around 200 works, is part the Hermitage 20/21 project, a large-scale program to expand the collection of 20th and 21st century art and presenting the work of contemporary artists in the Hermitage. In 2012, the State Hermitage Museum?s collection of contemporary art was expanded with a collection of works from the 20th/21st centuries belonging to the family of Georges Matcheret and Nadia Wolkonsky: the artist?s 848 letters to the collector. The envelopes presented at this exhibit were decorated by masters of the Soviet underground, Russian artists abroad and highly visible figures on the post-Soviet art scene. The small volume of the work did not demand a great deal of time from the artists, while at the same time the volume of the form was suitable to a high concentration of artistic expression. Georges Matcheret, an economic advisor at the French embassy in the USSR in the 1980?s, who requested that artists he knew decorate a regular postal envelope, collected a collection of works that is unique in its volume and character. It is made up of a total of 848 pieces by leading Russian and Soviet, including such famous masters as Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Ivan Chuikov, Ernst Neizvestny, Oleg Tselkov, Dmitri Prigov, and more. The collection of Matcheret and Wolkonsky (Matcheret?s spouse) is a unique illustration of Russia from the Soviet times to today.--www.hermitagemuseum.org.
Subjects: Russian Art, Exhibitions, Private collections, Catalogs, Envelopes (Stationery), Arts in general, History of the arts, Special subjects, characters, persons, religious arts
Places: France
Time periods: 20th century