“Playing with Masterpieces: from Henri Matisse to Marina Abramovic”

Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center presents an exhibition "Playing with Masterpeices: from Henri Matisse to Marina Abramovic". The exhibition will demonstrate modern and contemporary art masterpieces from cubism to video art. Following foreign and Russian artists will be at the centre of the display: Kazimir Malevich and Francis Bacon, Roy Lichtenstein and Victor Pivovarov, Natalia Goncharova and Marina Abramović, Alberto Giacometti and Bridget Riley, Anselm Kiefer and Niko Pirosmani.

"Playing with Masterpeices" is mainly designed for a family visit. The display works as an amusement park where visitors need to climb a staircase, to pass under something, to ride down the slide or to open a cupboard in order to see a work of art so that both children and adults can perceive contemporary art masterpieces beyond styles and conceptions. The exhibition will include selected works of the XX and XXI century such as masterpieces by Kazimir Malevich (Three Figures in a Field), Francis Bacon (Study for head of George Dyer), Roy Lichtenstein (Portrait), Vladimir Yakovlev (Cat Catching a Bird), Viktor Pivovarov (For Pasha, For Vika), Natalia Goncharova (Bathing Girls), Anselm Kiefer (For Adalbert Stifter) as well as works by Wassily Kandinsky, Niko Pirosmani, Marina Abramovic, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and others prominent artists. Visitors will enjoy more than 30 art works in different genres: painting, photography, installation or experimental animation.

Adults often feel lost at the contemporary art exhibitions because they think that it is necessary to know names or to have special knowledge in order to understand unfamiliar forms of art. On the other hand, children feel neglected because they simply cannot see paintings displayed too high on the wall. The exhibition "Playing with Masterpieces" presents art at children’s eye level while objects and annotations help them to see museum as an entertaining and child-friendly space. As for adults, they can explore contemporary art without fear of being lost.

Masterpieces of various styles and periods mold into a statement of its own which aims to point out a universal nature of art, to enter into a dialogue with it and to let emotions prevail over reason. 

As a part of the exhibition the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center organizes a public educational program that will include lectures on emotional intelligence, children workshops and multidisciplinary talks with psychologists, art historians and body practitioners.

Curated by: Alexei Munipov, Irina Munipova, Liya Chechik, Irina Dvoretskaya    

Architecture: Alexei Tregubov