Milan's MUDEC museum of culture is paying tribute to Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky in a new exhibition of 49 works on loan from major Russian museums including the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and Moscow's Pushkin.
The exhibition, titled 'Kandinsky, Knight Errant: The Journey Towards Abstraction", opens Wednesday and runs through July 9, in an examination of the artist's "genius period".
The show recalls passages from the painter's training, to his visual imagery grounded in the Russian tradition, through to his turn towards the abstract and ultimately his last works completed after he moved to Germany, never to return to his homeland.
In addition to the 49 works on loan, there are also 85 other objects on display, including icons, traditional prints and other examples of Russian decorative art, following on the 150th anniversary celebration of the artist's birth.
The exhibition is closely tied to MUDEC's mission of analysing the crossover between art and ethnography.
A recurring theme in the show is that of the "errant knight", to which an entire section of the exhibition is dedicated.
It aims to show the artist's poetic nature through a series of engravings inspired by fairy tales, with Russian icons including a 16th-century "St. George and the Dragon". Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala said the exhibition "enhances the calling of the culture museum, a place that Milan invests in as the sign of a renewed international openness".
Franco Moscetti, CEO of the Sole 24 Ore publishing group, which is a co-sponsor of the exhibition, said 800,000 people have visited the museum since March 2015.
"We're proud to present an exhibition of never-before-seen works, contributing to promoting the role of cultural capital in Milan," Moscetti said.
"Once again we trust that our group has shown the results that can be achieved when culture and business work together".
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