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This Thursday marks a week since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine and in Russia, at least with regard to the art world, we can already speak of a before and after.

Paralyzed museums, artists fleeing, thousands of signatures against the war... the opposition to the conflict is visible in Russia despite the threat of

from the government.

To this we must add the growing international pressure towards

and the oligarchs who have been watering the main cultural institutions of the West for years with generous donations.

The list of big names in Russian culture who have publicly expressed their rejection of the invasion of Ukraine grows every day.

On that list are the

, Vladimir Urin (the same one who in 2014 approved the annexation of Crimea), the artistic director of the Alexandrisnky theater in Saint Petersburg, Valery Fokin (last European Theater Prize), the person in charge of the Bolshoi Drama Theater of Saint Petersburg, Andrei Moguchy, and

.

In the letter of protest that the four have signed, they demand a withdrawal of the troops and read: "We act not only as figures from the world of culture but as ordinary people, citizens of our country, of our Homeland. Among us are the children and grandchildren of those who fought in the Great Patriotic War, witnesses and participants in that War. The

lives in each of us

. We don't want a new one, we don't want people to die."

Elena Kovalskaya, director of the Meyerhold Center in Moscow, resigned at the beginning of the invasion and said goodbye to her post, calling

Putin a

The Frenchman

has left the direction of the Stanislavsky and

, former artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet and now artist-in-residence at the American Ballet Theatre, has resigned from premiering a new ballet at the Bolshoi in Moscow that he was preparing in the capital Russian.

Ratmansky grew up in Kiev, has family there, and quickly left Moscow with the rest of his team after the start of the invasion for New York.

Two Russian artists who were to participate in the

have withdrawn from the art festival and according to

, thousands are signing anti-war petitions.

and

they had been selected to represent Russia at the Italian biennial next April, but before the outbreak of the conflict, they have declined to participate.

"There is no place for art when civilians die under missile fire, when Ukrainian citizens hide in shelters, when Russian protesters are silenced," Savchenkov said on his Instagram profile.

The curator of the Russian pavilion, Raimundas Malasauskas, has also announced his withdrawal and the organization of the Biennale has confirmed that the Russian pavilion will remain closed.

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In Moscow, the two most important contemporary art museums in the country have also stopped their future exhibitions and suspend their events.

This has been decided by the recently inaugurated

, the spectacular 1907 power station converted into a contemporary art center by

, which Vladimir Putin himself visited last December.

The same position that the

designed by

and promoted by the philanthropist

, the ex-wife of billionaire

one of Putin's faithful allies.

"The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art team has decided to stop work on all exhibitions until the human and political tragedy unfolding in Ukraine ceases. We cannot maintain the illusion of normalcy when such events are happening," he said. the museum management in a statement.

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Upcoming exhibitions at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art included those on Anne Imhof and Turner Prize winner Helen Marten.

"We cannot turn a blind eye to the tragic events of which we have all become witnesses," says a statement from GES-2, where the main exhibition of

, a famous Icelandic artist, who had been running , has been paralyzed

a peculiar

in which Russian and Ukrainian actors recreated episodes of

, the mythical American soap opera of the 1980s.

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