Exhibition of etchings at the Pushkin Museum: Goya, Rembrandt, Steinberg

Kremlin today

Etching is a kind of engraving on metal based on gravure printing technique when etching metal with acids.

The exhibition «Between Heaven and Earth» was opened at the Pushkin State University. It is timed to coincide with the 85th anniversary of the birth of Eduard Steinberg. The exhibition includes works from the collection of the museum and private collection of Galina Manevich. It contains four sections devoted to man’s reflections on the eternal contradictions of our world.

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The exhibition is opened by 18 etchings, created in the late period of  Goya’s life, entitled Disparathes (translated as “absurdities”). The works reflect a loss of faith in the rationality of existence and confrontation with dark and irrational forces.

The museum explains the concept of the exhibition by the fact that in different eras artists have raised the problem of the finitude of existence and the desire to find eternity in their work, turning to the themes of fall and redemption, despair and hope.

https://moscowchanges.ru/go/pushkinskij-vystavka/

During Goya’s lifetime this cycle was not exhibited; it was first presented to the public in 1864. The artist left no comment on this series”, said Julia Merenkova, curator of the section.

The next section of the exhibition is devoted to the Russian painter Chekrygin, who, like Goya, but almost a hundred years later, lived through the civil war. His artistic language is distinguished by “laconicism and the use of a minimum of expressive means“.


This is an artist with a special mindset. All his work is one idea, repetitive, closed, but having a sequel, it develops from composition to composition. The feeling of volatility, emotional and psychological instability is reflected in the cycle of works presented at the exhibition“, – explained curator of the section Oleg Antonov. He also noted that 2022 marks the centenary of the artist’s death.

https://pushkinmuseum.art/events/archive/2022/exhibitions/between/index.php?lang=en

Then follows a section devoted to the birthday boy Steinberg, who after half a century “as if repeated in his work” the way of Chekrygin – from sorrow about the dead to contemplation, imbued with love and memory. 

He belongs to the artists of the sixties, although he did in other decades. You can see his desire to find his own way in the philosophical and plastic planes. Steinberg’s deep reflections on land and religion are associated with personal experiences about the departure of each person“, –  said the curator of the section Anna Chudetskaya. She stressed that Steinberg’s work was donated to the museum by his widow.

Rembrandt’s late etchings round off the exhibition.

They are devoted to a reflection on human life from birth to death. In his works, the spheres of earth and sky seem to merge to form a ‘universal space’ where opposites meet again, and light holds the promise of salvation“, – explains the curator of the section Natalia Markova.