"Genuine art is eternal": The international exhibition and contest "Pushkin’s St Petersburg" at St Petersburg University

The exhibition-contest is set to mark three significant events. They are: the 300th anniversary of the University, the 225th anniversary of Alexander Pushkin, and the upcoming City Day. The opening ceremony brought together leading St Petersburg University specialists in the field of art.

This exhibition is the starting point for developing a large-scale art festival at the University to unite professional community of artists and serve as a gateway to the world of Russian art.

Professor Ivan Uralov, Senior Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts at St Petersburg University

According to Irina Tsymbal, Deputy Dean for Youth Policy at the Faculty of Arts, Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at St Petersburg University, the exhibition gives a feeling of spring lightness that is now in St Petersburg and creates a flair of granite inaccessibility. "St Petersburg is a multifaceted city. At different times, artists have presented St Petersburg in different ways: lyrical, tragic, tender, romantic, and even menacing. I am glad that our participants convey all its versatility," said the artist. 

To take part in the contest, Mariia Pak, in less than a month, painted the canvas "No, all of me won’t die" in oil on canvas and personally brought it to Petersburg. Mariia Pak is an artiste-muralist, Associate Professor at the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov. "I was pleased to accept the invitation from my colleagues to represent the Moscow school of painting at the exhibition-contest," she said. "St Petersburg for me is the best evidence that genuine art is eternal. This is the message I wanted to convey in my work." 

Tatiana Kudoiarova, a student at the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, presented a collection of souvenir scarves entitled "The Summer Garden" in silk-screen printing technique. This type of printing transfers an image to the fabric using special dense meshes coated with photoresist, i.e. a polymer light-sensitive material, onto which a small amount of paint is applied with a special spatula, or a squeegee. "When creating products, I was inspired by the biography of Alexander Pushkin," the student said. "He loved to walk around the Summer Garden and often wrote in his letters to his wife Natalia Goncharova that this place was home for him." 

A restored miniature copy of one of the most recognisable and iconic, largely thanks to Alexander Pushkin, monuments of St Petersburg, i.e. "The Bronze Horseman" was shown at the exhibition by Associate Professor Vladimir Torbik, Head of the Department of Restoration at St Petersburg University. He worked on the project together with Khristina Shumilova, Lecturer in the Department of Restoration at the University; students of the academic programme "Restoration of Fine and Applied Art Objects"; and specialists from the Heritage restoration workshop.

The University has been home to this small copy of the monument since at least the end of the 19th century. We did a great job. We cleared the surface of the plaster and bronze from dirt and traces of previous repair work, glued together the loose parts of the pedestal, eliminated and strengthened cracks, and applied a conservation coating to the surface of the figurine.

Associate Professor Vladimir Torbik, Head of the Department of Restoration at St Petersburg University

The multimedia part of the exhibition included cartoons created specifically for the contest-exhibition by the University students under the guidance of Iliana Makhovikova, Assistant Professor in the Department of Design at St Petersburg University. 

The exhibition also presented works in the field of reconstruction of historical costumes. Students at the the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design accurately reproduced the dress of the Biedermeier era and ceremonial costumes of the 1830s. 

The results of the contest will be announced on 27 June. You can visit the exhibition in the Exhibition Hall at the Twelve Collegia building at 7–9 Universitetskaya Embankment from 11am to 6pm.