It was always important for the Tretyakov Gallery to put on public display the Azerbaijani art heritage, held in its funds, Director General of the State Tretyakov Gallery Zelfira Tregulova told the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, commenting on the exhibition of Azerbaijani artists of 1960-1980's 'Absheron Constellation,' which was held in the gallery from November 2016 to February 2017.
On the exhibition there were presented works of Nadir Abdurakhmanov, Kamal Ahmadov, Rasim Babayev, Sattar Bahlulzade, Tofik Javadov, Javad Mirdzhavadov, Mir Nadir Zeynalov, Ashraf Murad, Togrul Narimanbekov, Tahir Salahov, Farhad Khalilov and Geyyura Yunusov - as well as sculptures by Fazil Najafov. The exhibition was opened in the cooperation with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, its president and the vice-president, Mehriban Aliyeva and Lelya Aliyeva, attended the vernissage.
"Indeed, it was a very interesting exhibition, which combined the works of Azerbaijani artists from the Tretyakov Gallery collection and from state and private collections of the Azerbaijan Republic. We exhibited the works of artists in Moscow, who are not very well known here, and the works of artists, which represented in the Tretyakov collection by official works, while in Azerbaijan's state and private collections - by unusual works, often made for themselves," she said in the first place.
"This exhibition showed that there was no hard division into the unofficial and official art in the 60s-80s. The same artist could have been an exhibitor of the 'We Build Communism' all-union exhibition, and at the same time create other things in his studio. And this seems to be common to all artists. It seems to us very important to put this art on display, since we have a unique collection of art from the once-union republics, which are independent states now," Zelfira Tregulova noted.
The Tretyakov Gallery is open for cooperation with Azerbaijani museums. "For the last two years we have made two large projects related to the art of Azerbaijan - a personal exhibition of Tahir Salakhov and the 'Absheron Constellation'. At the same time, Azerbaijani museums take part in almost each of our exhibitions, they have really wonderful collections of Russian art. It suffices to recall the El Lissitzky exhibition, which started with the work of 1919 from the Azerbaijan National Art Museum's collection. Now the 'Volga Coast' unique work is on display at the Kuindzhi exhibition, it was also provided by Azerbaijan," the director general of the Tretyakov Gallery said.
