The treasures of the Morozov collection in Paris
French President Emmanuel Macron with the boss of the luxury group LVMH, Bernard Arnault, and French Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot during the opening of the exhibition “The Morozov collection, icons of modern art” at the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris, September 21, 2021 © Yoan VALAT / POOL / AFP
Text by: Isabelle Chenu Follow
6 mins
The Louis Vuitton Foundation presents until February 22, 2022 the Morozov collection, one of the most important collections in the world of Impressionist and modern art.
This is the first time since its creation at the very beginning of the 20th century that this collection has traveled outside Russia.
200 French and Russian modern art masterpieces by brothers Mikhaïl and Ivan Morozov are displayed throughout Frank Gehry's building.
An exhibition directly negotiated with the Kremlin which took more than five years of work and an exhibition catalog prefaced by the two presidents Vladimir Poutine and Emmanuel Macron.
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A highly diplomatic opening
The French president inaugurated this exhibition Tuesday evening affirming the determination of France to strengthen its relations with Russia and that in spite of the "
turpitudes of the present time
" added Bernard Arnault.
Because cultural relations can sometimes warm the coldest commercial or diplomatic relations.
In 2015, nothing was going on between France and Russia after the annexation of Crimea by Vladimir Putin.
But the weather is fine between the French luxury group LVMH and Russian museums.
The following year, the Vuitton Foundation succeeded in a tour de force: presenting the incredible Shchoukine collection in Paris, which had attracted 1.29 million visitors.
Today, the Morozov collection - an exceptional set of masterpieces of modern art and Russian pride - is presented to the Vuitton Foundation. It was set up at the very beginning of the 20th century by the brothers Mikhaïl and Ivan Morozov, rich Muscovite industrialists, cultivated, passionate and daring. They were 20 when they started buying Manet, Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin, Bonnard, Van Gogh. Nationalized in 1918 after the Russian Revolution, divided between different museums, it has suffered from the vicissitudes of history, but reaches us in majesty. The LVMH group, for which Russia is a market for spirits and cosmetics, has financed without counting the restoration of a large number of works that otherwise would not have been able to travel, paid the exorbitant price of insurance,transport by trucks and police escorts, which almost no French museum could afford.
Three times postponed, due to the Covid-19, the presentation of the Morozov collection is the artistic event of the return to Paris
After passing through a door decorated with a high relief, a replica of the sculpture at the entrance to the Moscow Art Theater, the visitor gets to know the “Morozov clan”, family and friends.
The portraits of the brothers, Mikhail and Ivan, show them stout, strapped in black frock coats, with keen eyes under the mustaches and beards of their time.
Then follow one another through the rooms of works by Manet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Picasso, Gauguin, Bonnard, Vuillard, Rodin etc.
In a separate room, a little-known Van Gogh captivates:
La Ronde des prisoners
(1890), the only one staring at the viewer is a man with red hair, like the painter.
Installation view of the exhibition “The Morozov Collection.
Icons of modern art ”, Fondation Louis Vuitton: Claude Monet:“ Un Coin de jardin à Montgeron ”(1876) and Claude Monet:“ L'Étang à Montgeron ”(1876).
© Louis Vuitton Foundation / Marc Domage
An exceptional eye
Who were these collectors who were able to recognize, in the effervescence of the turn of the 19th century, artists who are now stars of museums?
Mikhail and Ivan Morozov were born in 1870 and 1871 into a rich Muscovite family of textile manufacturers, of Serve origin and of Old Believing Orthodox religion.
Their mother gave them a solid artistic education, with drawing lessons by Russian artists who had come to train in Paris and were familiar with the Impressionists.
Perhaps this is where their exceptional sharpness comes from.
Mikhaïl, the eldest, traveled and acquired his first paintings in Paris at the age of 20.
He is "
daring
", chooses Manet, Degas, but above all Van Gogh and Gauguin, two painters not at all recognized at the time.
Today the Gauguin and Cézanne rooms are two of the exhibition's highlights.
Mikhail, an upset artist
Mikhail died young, at 33, but his collection already includes 39 exceptional paintings. Ivan is destined to take over the family business, he is a frustrated artist. He too buys in Paris, in a less unbridled way than his elder brother, but with an eye just as sure. Impressionists, post-impressionists, Nabis and above all ... Cézanne, he will have a “Cézanne cabinet” in his apartments. Cézanne whom he discovered in 1907 during the posthumous exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. Ivan is also interested in contemporary Russian painters. Several paintings were part of the trip to Paris.
In barely ten years, the Morozov brothers will build an exceptional collection with the idea of a program, a museum intended to promote modern art and French art in Russia. They buy in Paris, at the salons, canvases that still smell of fresh paint, but also order. Ivan asks Henri Matisse, of which he already owns early works and still lifes, a triptych of Moroccan motifs with blue predominantly from ultramarine to turquoise and azure. The painter Pierre Bonnard creates several pieces including a cycle of the four seasons for the collector's private mansion, in monumental formats and in shimmering and solar colors, a commission of unparalleled magnitude in the artist's work.
Installation view of the exhibition The Morozov Collection.
Icons of modern art, Fondation Louis Vuitton.
Aristide Maillol: “Pomone” and “Flore”, Paris, 1910. Maurice Denis: “L'Histoire de Psyché”, 1909. © Fondation Louis Vuitton / Marc Domage
Sent to the Urals
The two brothers were born twenty years after Sergei Chtchoukine, a wealthy industrialist, also passionate about French painting of his time.
The three men buy at the same time, because Shchukin starts his collection in his forties.
They know each other, appreciate each other and aim to bequeath their collections to the Tretyakov Gallery after their death.
With the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the collections were nationalized, first visible on the walls of the mansions of the two surviving industrialists, then reunited "
in a pictorial chaos
" with other art objects, in a few rooms of one of the two mansions.
The paintings were sent to the Urals at the outbreak of war with Germany in 1941 and remained there for years, as best they could, in -40 degrees.
It was only at the end of the 1950s that the Soviet public could admire them again at the Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin Museums (Moscow) and the Hermitage (Saint Petersburg).
Joy and energy
At the Vuitton Foundation, extended opening hours have been announced to adapt to the expected crowds of this blockbuster exhibition which brings back joy and energy after long months of cultural scarcity.
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