Digitisation of The State Tretyakov Gallery Archives of Larionov and Goncharova

In 2015 RAPR signed a partnership agreement with The Tretyakov Gallery in Russia to start the works on digitising archives of Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova. Evgenia Iliukhina is awarded our grant to select documents from the Gallery’s collection for scanning. Following that, every document will be commented and footnoted. The researcher will also create indexes of names of individuals, geographical locations, institutions and art works mentioned, and select the images of art works for including into the online database. Commentary of the Goncharova and Larionov archives is a major academic undertaking aiming to publish thousands of documents not known to the experts of Russian art.

• Date Grant Awarded: Round 1, September 2015
• Project Timeline: November 2016 – September 2018
• Grantee: The Tretyakov Gallery, Eugenia Iliukhina, individual researcher, and Tatiana Yudkevich, individual researcher
• Grant Award: £16,532

Details of the Project

The purpose of the project is to provide easy access to the archive for national and international researchers and experts in the following fields:

• the Russian fine art of the twentieth century
• the history of Russian theater and ballet
• the history of Russian Emigration

The findings will be open for the wider public interested in one of the brightest periods of Russian art history – all materials will be accessible through a public online database. The presentation of the database with uploaded scanned works and all commentary will coincide with the opening of Larionov exhibition in September 2018 – January 2019. However, it is expected that some works on footnotes and descriptions for the database may continue beyond 2019.

About the Researchers

Eugenia Iliukhina is Deputy Head of the Drawing’s Department of the Tretyakov Gallery. Eugenia has been working in the State Tretyakov Gallery  from 1979: 1990 – conservator M. Larionov, N. Goncharova.; 1992 – senior researcher of Department of M. Larionov, N. Goncharova researches; 1999 – deputy head of the Drawing’s Department. Conservator  (20 000 artworks of Larionov and Gontcharova)

For years of work in the Department Eugenia Iliukhina took part in organizing exhibitions and contributed to several catalogues: “M. Larionov. N. Goncharova. From the Parisian heritage. Schedule (TG,1999-2000); “Women’s view” (TG, 2002); “Stanzas on the art. Faces and images of the twentieth century” (Trento – Rovereto, 2002); “Natalia Gontcharova” (2013);

Eugenia’s scientific works and publications include:

• “Drawings from Paris collection of artists”,- “M. Larionov. N. Goncharova. Parisian heritage in the Tretyakov gallery“, 1999
• “Theatre in the works of Larionov and Goncharova” with the publication of memoirs and correspondence of artists in the exhibition catalogue “M. Larionov. N. Goncharova. Parisian heritage in the Tretyakov gallery“, 1999
• “Theatre” and “Publication” in the book: G. G. Pospelov, E. A. Ilyukhina. Mikhail Larionov. Moscow, 2005
• M.Larionov. The life in the ballet. – “The history of Russian ballet real and the fantastic in drawings, memoirs and photographs from the archive of M.Larionov”, Moscow, 2009
• “ N.Goncharova. Between painting and Theatre” -“Natalia Goncharova” (2013)

Tatiana Yudkevich is an art historian, Chef Science Secretary of the State Tretyakov Gallery. For 7 years Tatiana worked as editor of the First Publication Project of the Vladimir Potation Foundation, which prepared books about different little known and sufficiently studied collections of Russian museums. One of these books was devoted to a part of Mikhail Larionov archive in the Tretyakov Gallery. Tatiana Yudkevich worked at this project with Evgenia Iliukhina who is the main specialist on the Mikhail Larionov’s art as well as his archive. Tatiana is glad to continue her collaboration with Evgenia on this project.

Tatiana Yudkevich and Evgenia Iliukhina will select documents from Goncharova and Larionov archive in the State Tretyakov Gallery Moscow for scanning. Every document will be commented and footnoted. The researcher will also create indexes of names of individuals, geographical locations, institutions and art works mentioned and select the images of art works for posting on the website of the archive. Commentary of the Goncharova-Larionov archive is a major academic undertaking aiming to publish thousands of documents not known to the experts of Russian art.

The Tretyakov Gallery is the main museum of Russian national art, reflecting its unique contribution to world culture. It is a hospitable museum that is known for its rich collection and variety of presented ideas. The Tretyakov Gallery has three main goals: