Tretyakov Gallery

• 1. Merchant Patron And Founding

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  In 1856, a Muscovite merchant named Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov purchased two paintings by Russian artists. The first was Temptation by Nikolay Shilder and the second was Skirmish with Finnish Smugglers by Vasily Khudyakov. This purchase marked the founding year of what would become the State Tretyakov Gallery. Before this moment in 1854, 1855, he had already bought eleven drawings and nine pictures by Dutch Old Masters. His aim was to create a collection that might later grow into a museum of national art. By 1867, the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov opened its doors to the public. At that time, the gallery's collection consisted of 1,276 paintings, 471 sculptures, and ten drawings by Russian artists. It also held eighty-four paintings by foreign masters.

• 2. National Gift And Public Access

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  August 1892 brought a pivotal change when Tretyakov presented his art gallery to the city of Moscow as a gift. The collection at this time included 1,287 paintings and 518 graphic works of the Russian school. There were seventy-five paintings and eight drawings from European schools alongside fifteen sculptures and a collection of icons. The official opening of the museum called the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov took place on the 15th of August 1893. The gallery was located in a mansion that the Tretyakov family had purchased in 1851. As the collection grew, the residential part of the mansion filled with art. This necessitated additions to the mansion to store and display the works properly. Additions were made in 1873, 1882, 1885, and 1892 before the famous façade construction began.

• 3. Architectural Evolution And Expansion

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  The gallery's physical footprint expanded significantly over the twentieth century through several key architectural projects. Construction of the famous façade occurred between 1902 and 1904 to the south from the Moscow Kremlin. Architect V. Bashkirov designed it based on drawings by the artist Viktor Vasnetsov. The style was a peculiar Russian fairy-tale aesthetic. In 1929, the Church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi closed its doors as a place of worship. By 1932, this building became a storage facility for paintings and sculptures within the gallery complex. A new two-floor building known as the Schusevsky building rose on the north side of the main structure in 1936. These halls first served exhibitions before becoming part of the main route of exposure starting in 1940. From 1986 to 1995, the Tretyakov Gallery in Lavrushinsky Lane closed to accommodate a major renovation project. During that decade, the only museum open to visitors was the building on Crimean Val, number ten. This branch had been merged with the Tretyakov Gallery in 1985.

• 4. Soviet Nationalization And Wartime Evacuation

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  On the 3rd of June 1918, the Tretyakov Gallery was declared owned by the Russian Federated Soviet Republic. It received the name State Tretyakov Gallery at that time. Igor Grabar was appointed director again after being elected trustee in early 1913. The Great War forced personnel to begin dismantling exhibitions from the very first days of conflict. Paintings were rolled onto wooden shafts and covered with tissue paper. Workers placed them into boxes sheathed with waterproof material. In the middle of summer 1941, a train of seventeen wagons traveled from Moscow carrying the collection to Novosibirsk. The gallery remained closed in Moscow until the 17th of May 1945 upon the conclusion of the Great War. Alexey Shchusev became director in 1926 and oversaw the acquisition of neighboring property on Maly Tolmachevsky Lane. That house served as the former home of merchant Sokolikov before becoming part of the museum grounds.

• 5. Modern Branches And Contemporary Art

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  In 1985, the Tretyakov Gallery administratively merged with a gallery of contemporary art located along the Garden Ring. This modernist building sat immediately south of the Krymsky Bridge inside the Central House of the Artists. The grounds contained Socialist Realism sculpture including Yevgeny Vuchetich's Iron Felix statue which left Lubyanka Square in 1991. Nearby stood Zurab Tsereteli's eighty-six-meter-tall statue of Peter the Great. Plans emerged later to demolish the late Soviet modernism style gallery though public opinion strongly opposed this action. New branches based in Kaliningrad and Vladivostok received funding from reserved oil and gas revenue. These satellite galleries extended the institution's reach to the extreme west and far east of Russia. In 1983 construction work began to expand the main gallery area under director Yuri Korolev who led from 1980 to 1992. A new building named Corps of Engineers rose on the south side in 1989 to house engineering systems and services.

• 6. Controversial Icon Transfers And Politics

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  May 2012 saw the Tretyakov Art Gallery host the prestigious FIDE World Chess Championship between Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand. Organizers felt the event would promote both chess and art simultaneously. A more contentious moment arrived in May 2023 when the Tretyakov Gallery refused to hand over Andrei Rublev's Trinity icon to the Russian Orthodox Church. June 2023 marked a turning point as the icon transferred to Moscow's main cathedral despite museum protests. This transfer occurred via personal order of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The collection contains more than 130,000 exhibits ranging from Theotokos of Vladimir to Wassily Kandinsky's Composition VII. Kazimir Malevich's Black Square also resides within these walls. The museum attracted 894,374 visitors in 2020 which represented a sixty-eight percent drop from 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It ranked thirteenth on the list of most-visited art museums globally that same year.