On March 27, the State Tretyakov Gallery unveiled the exhibition titled “Seeing the Unknown,” an expansive survey drawn from the museum’s own funds, spanning paintings and sculptures from the 17th through the 21st centuries. The event was reported by TASS and marks a thoughtful exploration of how urban space and city life have been imagined and depicted across several art movements and generations. The gallery’s curatorial team emphasizes that the show is more than a collection of isolated works; it is a dialogue about the evolving image of the city and its center over time, inviting visitors to see how Moscow and the Kremlin have inspired artists from different eras.
Among the featured works are canvases by Wassily Kandinsky, Natalia Goncharova, and Alexei Venetsianov, all drawn from the Tretyakov holdings and rarely loaned for exhibitions. According to Tatiana Karpova, Deputy Director General of the Tretyakov Research Gallery, the display is designed to guide visitors through a sequence of cityscapes and urban scenes. The aim is to show how artists have perceived the city’s core from the early 18th century onward and how the portrayal of urban life transformed under avant-garde movements as viewers and creators reimagined the modern metropolis.”
Curators Nina Divova and Anna Churkina organized the selection by genre, arranging works around architectural views, urban interiors, street scenes, daily life, and historical moments. This approach illuminates how different artists can treat the same motif in contrasting ways, from precise architectural drawing to atmospheric, impressionistic captures of city rhythms. The result is a layered experience that invites comparisons across time, helping the audience trace shifts in technique, tone, and urban consciousness.
The exhibition also presents for the first time a group of photographs that capture Art Nouveau interiors created by the World of Art circle—Alexander Benois, Konstantin Korovin, Lev Bakst, Alexander Golovin, and Igor Grabar. These photographic vignettes complement the painted and sculptural works, offering a broader sense of how designers and artists collaborated to craft the visual language of early 20th-century interiors. Alongside these, the show includes sculptures from various centuries and porcelain compositions by Alexei Sotnikov, highlighting the breadth of the collection and the museum’s commitment to presenting rarely displayed pieces in a new light.
Visitors can expect a carefully paced sequence that blends different media, periods, and subject matter to illuminate a shared sensitivity toward urban space. The exhibition runs to date and invites audiences to reflect on how cities—centers of culture, power, and daily life—shape artistic imagination across generations. The public will have access to the display starting March 28, providing a timely opportunity to experience this cross-section of the Tretyakov collection firsthand. (citation: TASS)
Further context from the museum program confirms that this show continues a broader interest in urban reinterpretation, building on recent initiatives and conversations around Crimea seen through the lens of Petrov-Vodkin’s work in Moscow. The pairing of bold city imagery with interior design and crafted objects underscores the museum’s role as a living archive that encourages dialogue between past and present, artists, viewers, and the evolving cityscape. (citation: TASS)”