This exhibition is touring Paris, Saint Petersburg and Moscow, displaying the remarkable collection of French and Russian modern art collected in the early 20th-century by the prominent Moscow philanthropists and collectors Mikhail Abramovitch and Ivan Abramovitch Morozov.
The collection will form a body of artworks never exhibited before in Paris. It will combine a collection of canvasses which are symbolic of the French Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Modernist movements, with works by emerging artists from the Russian avant-garde to form an extraordinary body of works, which have rarely been seen together. It will also mark a new step in the cultural relationship of France and Russia as it continues the close collaboration of the countries’ cultural institutions which began in 2015.
The Morozov family, in the early 20th-century, were at the centre of the cultural life of Moscow. Whilst the brothers originally collected artwork by young and aspiring Russian painters, such as Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova, Ivan gradually, around 1903, began collecting French art. His collection, however, was nationalised by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 October Revolution. Following World War Two, the Morozov collection was finally split between the State Hermitage Museum and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton will display a major group of modern masterpieces acquired by the Morozov brothers. On show will be works from Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Bonnard, Denis, Matisse, Derain and Picasso. There will be in total around a hundred works of art on display coming from the State Hermitage Museum in Saint-Petersburg to Paris before travelling to the State Hermitage Museum and then the State Pushkin Museum, with other impressionist and modernist paintings which are said to also travel to the Fondation Louis Vuitton for this unique display.