Collector Vladimir Nekrasov gave the Tretyakov Gallery a unique collection of paintings by Heliy Korzhev

Collector Vladimir Nekrasov donated to the State Tretyakov Gallery the picturesque and graphic works of the artist Heliya Korzhev. This was reported to journalists by the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation Vladimir Medinsky during the launch of the "Night of the Arts" action at the Tretyakov Gallery on the Crimean shaft.

"Today, Vladimir Nekrasov passes to the Tretyakov Gallery a collection of 33 paintings and 2 engravings by Heliya Korzhev," the minister said. The Tretyakov Gallery, which already has 10 Korzhev paintings in its collection, now becomes the owner of the largest and most qualitative collection of the artist's works. Prior to that, the museum housed primarily the early canvases of Korzhev, created in the 1960s and 1970s. Later in the Tretyakov Gallery on the Crimean Val will be allocated a hall specially for the artist's works. The works will be exhibited in February 2018.

The minister also recalled that last year in the Tretyakov Gallery there was Korzhev's exhibition, during its work 100 thousand people visited. "We know how much this is a powerful and expensive artist in the art market, without a doubt, this is a major patronage of the Tretyakov Gallery," Medinsky said.

The general director of the State Tretyakov Gallery, Zelphira Tregulova, said that in the 1990s and 2000s, the legacy of this "greatest artist" was sold mostly abroad. And by the time of the opening of the Korzhev insertion in the Tretyakov Gallery in 2015, there were only 25 works by this artist in the state museum collections of the country. Most of the legacy was in private American assemblies.

The exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery, according to Tregulova, prompted Vladimir Nekrasov to begin to return to Russia, to Moscow, to the Tretyakov Gallery what was "thoughtlessly sold in the most difficult and dashing years." "During the two years that have passed since the exhibition, he [the collector] negotiated in the most complicated ways and returned to the country Korzhev's principal works, which are not present in any museum of the country: the work of the biblical series, works connected with the war and with reflection on its consequences, the work of the so-called social cycle, "said the director of the Tretyakov Gallery.

Heliy Korzhev (1925-2012) - Soviet and Russian painter, one of their landmark representatives of Soviet realism. Known for a series of paintings on biblical subjects. Stand out against the background of contemporaries incredible scale and depth of comprehension of the time in which he lived. Among his most significant works are the paintings "Lovers", "Artist", the triptych "Communists" and the cycle "Fire-stricken by the fire". It is believed that they expressed a new view of the fate of the Soviet man and created a pictorial manifesto of the "thaw" era.