The Tour. Ludwig Museum — the collection of Russian Museum at MAMM

The exhibition showcases 38 works by world-famous artists of the 20th century such as Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Robert Rauschenberg, Joseph Beuys, Claes Oldenburg, Jonathan Borofsky, James Rosenquist, Gerhard Richter, Jörg Immendorff, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Tom Wesselmann, Anselm Kiefer, Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Dmitri Prigov, Mikhail Roginsky, Igor Makarevich, Viktor Pivovarov, Sergei Mironenko, Nikolai Ovchinnikov, Eduard Steinberg, Inspection Medical Hermeneutics (Sergei Anufriev, Yuri Leiderman, Pavel Pepperstein), Igor Ganikovsky and Ivan Chuikov.

In 1994 legendary collectors Peter and Irene Ludwig donated their collection of works by outstanding artists from the second half of the 20th century to the Russian Museum. This gift formed the basis of the permanent exhibition ‘Ludwig Museum in the Russian Museum’, opened to the public on 10 March 1995 in the Marble Palace. The founding agreement gave this new institution the special status of a ‘museum within a museum’. To this day the ‘Ludwig Museum in the Russian Museum’ exposition is the only major collection in Russia featuring modern and contemporary art works from the postwar period to the early 21st century. The Ludwig Museum collection also includes works by present-day luminaries of Russian art.

By the terms of an agreement with the Ludwig couple, the collection of the ‘Ludwig Museum in the Russian Museum’ is being constantly expanded. New works enter the collection in two ways — as donations from foreign and Russian artists (or their heirs) who participate in the rapidly developing exhibition programme of the ‘Ludwig Museum in the Russian Museum’, and as acquisitions mainly facilitated by the Ludwig Foundation. Today the collection incorporates works by 150 different authors.

The collection amassed by the Ludwigs encompasses exquisite items from the classical, mediaeval, baroque and rococo periods and also the art of pre-Columbian America, Africa, China and India, but it is best known for the exhibits by avant-garde artists, the works by Pablo Picasso, American pop art objects (the starting point of the Ludwig collection of contemporary art), and examples of German neo-expressionism.

In 1976 Peter and Irene Ludwig made the first presentation of 300 works from their collection to the city of Cologne, where they opened the first Ludwig Museum. Today exhibits from the Ludwig family’s collection are displayed worldwide in numerous museums and foundations that bear their name. Due to their impeccable taste and fine intuition, their interest in contemporary art, their fearlessness and ability to evaluate the creative potential of artists long before they were universally recognised, the Ludwigs amassed an impressive collection and contributed to the advancement of contemporary art, including works by Russian avant-gardists and nonconformists, on the world art scene.

The list of works donated to the Russian Museum was determined by the Ludwig family, together with representatives from the museum. This collection intended for the Russian Museum reflects the main artistic directions and strategies, acquainting the viewer with important works of pop art (Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Ruins’, Andy Warhol’s ‘Portrait of P. Ludwig’, Claes Oldenburg’s ‘Banana Splits and Glaces en Degustation’, etc.) and hyperrealism (Ralph Going’s ‘Unadilla Diner’), German neo-expressionism (Georg Baselitz’s ‘Bottle and Eagle’, Markus Lüpertz’s ‘Style: Eurydice’, Jörg Immendorff’s ‘Chairs’, Anselm Kiefer’s ‘Big Iron Fist, Germany’) and conceptual art (Ilya Kabakov’s ‘The Garden’ and works by Sergei Mironenko and the Medical Hermeneutics group).

In addition the collection demonstrates the development of cutting-edge trends, forms and genres, methods and technologies in contemporary art: Jonathan Borofsky’s ‘Man in Space Y 2589394’ — painting on canvas in an unconventional form, Tom Wesselmann’s ‘Monica’ — a monumental steel drawing cut by laser, and Igor Makarevich’s ‘Ilya’s Cupboard’ — an assemblage combining real everyday items (so-called ‘found objects’) with painting.

Works from the ‘Ludwig Museum in the Russian Museum’ regularly participate in major international projects worldwide. The Russian Museum organised a large-scale showing of this collection in Brazil in 2014, and the exhibition at the Bank of Brazil Cultural Centre in Rio de Janeiro ranked second in the world for attendance figures: in two months it attracted 530,088 visitors, and in just three cities in the country more than a million people viewed the exhibition.