*** If you’re planning on a visit on a Sunday in 2012 then you may find the exhibition closed – please see this post.
‘Brera Incontra il Pushkin: Collezionismo Russo tra Renoir e Matisse’
Milan, Milano, Pinacoteca di Brera
11th November 2011 – 5th February 2012
‘Brera meets the Pushkin, Russian collections/collecting from Renoir to Matisse’ is the roughly translated title of this major exhibition, part of the ‘year of Italian/Russian culture’ and the ‘swap’ for the the Caravaggio show that will be heading to Russia in December.
Seventeen masterpieces, allegedly insured for a billion Dollars, will be on show (see this PDF – Italian only – for the catalogue), taken from the Schukin and Morozov collections of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
Schukin and Morozov were fabric merchants, enormously wealthy, great travellers and committed collectors, and were both, in their times, far and away the largest clients of the art dealers and galleries of Paris. They were both friends and patrons of many of the artists, often acquiring works that were of little or no interest to either galleries or other collectors.