It's only thanks to legendary artist Tahir Salakhov that the new Tretyakov Gallery was able to implement incredible exhibition projects in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Zelfira Tregulova, director general of the State Tretyakov Gallery, told Vestnik Kavkaza at the sidelines of press conference on the opening of the new State Tretyakov Gallery's exhibition hall on Krymsky Val.
"When we planned exhibition program of the new wing of the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val for the coming years, we remembered all those incredible exhibition projects that were carried out here in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which had works of greatest artists of the West, leading artists of contemporary art. I'm talking about retrospectives of Robert Rauschenberg, Francis Bacon, Jannis Cunellis, Jean Tangley, Gilbert and George, James Rosenquist, Günther Jukka. Collections of major private collectors were exhibited here," she said.
"And the one behind all of these projects was one of my most beloved and respected artists, Tahir Teymurovich Salakhov. I still don't understand how under Soviet regulations, he still managed to organize projects that were absolutely contrary to principles on which Soviet aesthetics and ideology of art were built. Nevertheless, he succeeded in this," Zelfira Tregulova stressed.
"It's very interesting, because exhibitions were held in the space that was then called the Central House of Artists, but since it was next to the Tretyakov Gallery, many artists believed that their exhibitions took place in the Tretyakov Gallery. That's why Rauschenberg donated several of his works to the Tretyakov Gallery, they are stored in our collection," she noted.
