The rich tradition of French painting was an important influence on Russian art from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1920s, a period that saw the rise of many of the most important movements in modern art. A magnificent visual record of an unprecedented event, this book, the catalogue of an ambitious exhibition of master paintings from the four greatest museums of Russia, examines the interaction of these two great cultures. Drawing on the collections of the State Russian Museum and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Tretyakov Gallery and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the book presents outstanding examples of Salon painting, Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism in France, and related movements in Russia, among them The Wanderers, Constructivism, and Suprematism. Paintings by Renoir, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Matisse are reproduced, along with works by Kandinsky, Tatlin, and Malevich. Key episodes in the story of this fascinating exchange include the vital role played by the great Russian collectors Ivan Morosov and Sergei Shchukin, whose preeminent collections of French art were an inspiration to the Russian avant-garde; the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev's promotion of Russian art in France in 1906; and Henri Matisse's visit to Russia in 1911.

Including many of the paintings acquired by Catherine the Great as well as others added more recently, this book features paintings from 18th- and 19th-century France, works of the Italian Renaissance, Spanish paintings and paintings from England, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium and the USA.

How did the Eastern European and Soviet states write their respective histories of art and architecture during 1940s–1960s? The articles address both the Stalinist period and the Khrushchev Thaw, when the Marxist-Leninist discourse on art history was "invented" and refined. Although this discourse was inevitably "Sovietized" in a process dictated from Moscow, a variety of distinct interpretations emerged from across the Soviet bloc in the light of local traditions, cultural politics and decisions of individual authors. Even if the new "official" discourse often left space open for national concerns, it also gave rise to a countermovement in response to the aggressive ideologization of art and the preeminence assigned to (Socialist) Realist aesthetics.

* An exceptional exhibition catalog, a dive into the 19th and 20th century painting* Gathers 130 masterpieces togetherThe Fondation Louis Vuitton's unprecedented 2016 exhibition brought together 130 masterpieces, among the most iconic of the collection created in Moscow by the great Russian art patron, Sergei Shchukin. From Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1866) by Claude Monet, the Mardi gras (1888-90) by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin's Tahitian odalisque Eh quoi, tu es jalouse? (1892), the luminescent panel L'Atelier du peintre (1911) by Henri Matisse, to conclude with Pablo Picasso's Trois femmes (1908), the magnificence of Shchukin's collection is exhibited here. Extended by a group of some 30 major works from the Russian avant-gardes, including Counter Relief (1916) by Vladimir Tatlin, Green Stripe (1917) by Olga Rozanova, and Kazimir Malevich's monochrome painting, Black Suprematie Square (1929), Icons of Modern Art covers the extreme breadth of this journey through 19th- and 20th-century creation. The presentation of these exceptional works, where our collective gaze comes together, constitutes an exemplary "painting lesson."