One of the prominent new models for art that left a lasting imprint on the first half of the 20th

century European culture came with the rise of the notion of the ‘primitive’.1 At the same time

Sergey Shchukin amassed one of the greatest collections of contemporary French art. He was the

first collector to conceive of a great museum of modern art in his mansion in Moscow.2 His uncanny

sense for art made his collection representative of the progression of all French modern art.3 At the

outset, his collection was conceived for his country and nation.4 He set a mission for himself to

introduce to the Russian society the key contemporary movements in European art at that time,5

which Whitney Kean calls the ‘art of tomorrow'.6 This collection placed Russia at the forefront of

modern artistic world and became a ‘temple of modernity’ that attracted many avant-garde artists,

most important of all are Natalia Goncharova and Mihail Larionov.7 They are accepted as the

leading figures of the Russian primitivism.8 Scholars differ on what had a greater influence on

Russian primitivism, French modern art with elements of primitivism represented by Henri Matisse,

Paul Gauguin, Henri Rousseau or the Russian aesthetic tradition manifested in Orthodox icons and

folk decorations. This essay will begin with a condensed discussion on this matter, then it will

proceed to expand the theme with examples of paintings. The essay argues that while the interest in

the folk has already been widespread in Moscow, French paintings in the Shchukin’s collection provided the impetus and aid for the development of Russian primitivism by Goncharova and Larionov which they in turn drew from the primitive or primordial modes of expression unaffected by European artistic convention that they found in children’s drawings, folk and religious iconography...

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References:

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1 Moshe Barasch, Modern Theories of Art 2: From Impressionism to Kandinsky (London, New York University Press, 1998), p. 5

2 Natalya Semenova, André-Marc Delocque-Fourcaud, The Collector: The Story of Sergei Shchukin and His Lost Masterpieces, (Yale University Press, 2018), p. xi

3 Whitney Kean, French Painters, Russian Collectors: the Merchant Patrons of Modern Art in Pre-Revolutionary Russia (London, Hodder & Stoughton: 1994), p. 203

4 Cited in Mark Boguslavskij, "Case Notes: Irina Shchukina's Suit (On the Decision of a French Court)”, International Journal of Cultural Property, Vol. 4, (1995), p. 328

5 Natalia Murray, The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde: the Life and Times of Nikolay Punin: The Life and Times of Nikolay Punin, (Boston: Brill Publishing, 2012), p. 31

6 Kean, p. 204
7 Leah Rasmussen, “Curating Russia: The Shchukin Collection, Nationalism, and Border Crossing from Lenin to

Putin”, Canadian journal of European and Russian studies, no. 1 (2022), p. 48

8 Nina Gurianova, “Re-imagining the Old Faith: Larionov, Goncharova, and the Spiritual Traditions of Old Believers” in Modernism and the Spiritual in Russian Art, (ed.) Louise Hardiman, Nicola Kozicharow (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2017), p. 134