Agencies: “The Morozov Collection: Icons of Modern Art,” which opened last week in Paris, brings a “War and Peace”-scale blast of French and Russian painting — and reunites, for the first time since 1918, one of the two most substantial art collections of pre-revolutionary Russia.
When the French bourgeoisie still disdained the Paris avant-garde, the young Russian textile magnates Ivan and Mikhail Morozov bought the most innovative paintings in the city — and bought in bulk. Gauguin, Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso: All their works went east, and they would inspire two generations of Russian successors.
The Morozovs made Moscow into the offshore capital of French modern art in the years around 1900. Then came the October Revolution, when all of the 200 paintings were taken for the national collection. Ivan Morozov went into exile. Under Stalin, the paintings were suppressed and scattered as far as Siberia.
Their reassembly across four floors of the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris has been nearly a decade in the making, twice delayed by the pandemic. The backbreaking catalog was curated with cool precision by the former director of Paris’s Picasso Museum.
The exhibition required a colossal diplomatic effort, with assurances that French law would protect the Russian museums against any claims by the Morozovs’ descendants, and a personal sign-off for the loans from President Vladimir Putin.
