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Russian Nineteenth-Century Painting among the European Schools. A Concept in Soviet-Russian Art History
After the long period of cultural isolation it was allowed to include Russian art into European context. Soviet art historians began to use comparative approach which was illustrated in a landmark exhibition “Portrait in European Painting of 15th – Beginning of the 20th Centuries” (1972). Another contribution was made by Dmitry Sarabianov in his book Russian Painting of the 19th Century among European Schools (1980). Sarabianov focused on the formal or iconographic qualities of paintings rather than ideological aspects and tried to find European parallels to Russian painters.
The turn of 1980-1990-ies was determined by a number of remarkable comparative exhibitions. Exhibition catalogue was far more important than other genres of art book while museum curators took a lead role pushing aside academic scholars. The key aspect was Russian perception of French avant-guard as stated by the landmark exhibition Paul Gauguin: a View from Russia (1990).
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