The exhibition will feature more than 200 works from the museum’s collection and Moscow private collections: woodcuts, etchings, drawings and watercolors.
The exhibition tells about the creative legacy of Vasily Mate and his teaching activities. Belonging to the older generation of engravers, Mate was mainly engaged in reproduction engraving. His works were distinguished by the accuracy of rendering the originals and by their individual artistic style. His legacy includes not only reproductions of famous paintings, but also portraits of artists, collectors and other art figures.
While teaching at the Central School of Technical Drawing of Baron Alexander Stieglitz and the Imperial Academy of Arts, Mate educated a whole galaxy of engravers of the first half of the 20th century — masters of original art engraving. Artists Valentin Serov, Ilya Repin and Vladimir Makovsky, as well as architect Ivan Fomin and members of the World of Art association Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Evgeny Lancere worked in his etching workshop.
A special place in the exhibition is occupied by the work of Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, one of the most outstanding students of Mate, the first in Russian masters of artistic author’s woodcut and color printing. The main theme of her work was her hometown — Petersburg — Petrograd — Leningrad. For half a century, the artist has been creating images of the city on Neva and its surroundings. Ostroumova-Lebedeva is rightfully considered a classic of Russian art.
