Published on: 2026-09-11
Source: Moscow Government – Правительства Москвы –
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In the museum-reserve “Tsaritsyno”, where one of the richest collections of domestic naive art is kept, an exhibition titled “Non-naive Naive” is open, dedicated to one of the brightest phenomena in 20th-century visual art. In 11 halls — works by talented self-taught artists that depict everyday and spiritual life through the prism of their own experience.
What is naive art
Naive art is often called art without rules: artists usually do not have formal education, are not connected with a professional or traditional school, do not follow the canons of academic painting, but they do possess vivid imagination and a great desire to create.
It is generally believed that the domestic audience became familiar with naive art, one of the directions of artistic primitivism, only in the second half of the 20th century. But the history begins much earlier: Niko Pirosmani was the first recognized master of naive art in the territory of the Russian Empire. At the end of the 19th century, he created paintings and signboards, but most often decorated dukhans — Tiflis taverns. It was there that his works were seen by Moscow artists Kirill and Ilya Zdanevich, who introduced the public to Pirosmani’s work and organized his participation in exhibitions.
One of Pirosmani’s signs can be seen at the exhibition. Overall, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the city streets resembled a real art gallery — at least that’s what the young modernist artists living at that time said. While typeface signs, often in French or English, were more common on the central streets, closer to the outskirts pictograms were painted on building facades by those who could, to indicate goods for the semi-literate and illiterate. Tin signs featured bread, vegetables, fruits, sweets, and many other items so that passersby would immediately understand what was sold in the shop.
A special perspective
Naive artists spoke about what personally concerned them. A perfect example of this approach is Pavel Leonov’s painting “The Desert Needs Saigas.” He was born in 1920 in the village of Volotovsky in the Oryol region, began painting in the 1950s, and at the same time enrolled in the Correspondence People’s University of Arts, where his teacher was Mikhail Roginsky, who called him the Don Quixote of the Soviet era. In the 1980s, Leonov stopped painting because he feared arrest for unearned income, but in the 1990s he picked up the brush again. At that time, his works were actively bought by Moscow collectors who finally “developed a taste” for naive art.
The painting “The Desert Needs Saigas” was created in 1991. The artist depicted the rural area as he imagined it in his dreams: with shops, libraries, and developed infrastructure. Saigas occupy a special place — here they are domesticated and help humans with farming. The concept of the painting arose after the artist heard on the radio a story about the book by biologist Boris Petrishchev “The Desert Needs Saigas.” The scientist claimed that the population of these animals is under threat, needs protection, and that saigas can bring great benefits to agriculture.
One of the characteristic features of the naive art genre is the artists’ special approach to proportions and composition. Fantastic images are born on the canvases: flowers the size of trees, animals and birds resembling mythical creatures — such a beast became the main character of Vasily Grigoryev’s painting “Monster” (1914–1994). The artist copied images from postcards and magazine reproductions since childhood and, as a teenager during the New Economic Policy (NEP) period, began painting pictures to sell at fairs in his hometown Kirzhach (Vladimir region). Later he moved to Moscow, where in the 1980s he sold his works at the Sukharevsky, Tishinsky, and Preobrazhensky markets, as well as on Arbat Street. Among Moscow’s intelligentsia, the rumor about the “grandfather from Arbat” quickly spread, and the artist became popular. The important period of Vasily Grigoryev’s work was the creation of kitschy oilcloth rugs with images of swans and troikas — similar ones can be seen in Leonid Gaidai’s film “Operation Y and Other Shurik’s Adventures.” The character played by Georgy Vitsin sells his “mermaids” right at Tishinka.
Everyday Romance
Not all works in the exhibition belong to naive art; there are also related phenomena of artistic primitivism, for example, those that appeared in craft workshops. The paintings were created quickly, with repeated themes. The work was clear and coordinated: one artist painted the sky, another used a stencil to apply the silhouette of a house, a third depicted swans, and a fourth created tree crowns with a few sponge strokes. Such artists were called craftsmen; art historians consider their work to be one aspect of artistic primitivism.
This is how some of the most recognizable scenes were born: romantic dates, lovers, idyllic landscapes, swans, garden pavilions in parks. These motifs became especially popular after the domestic audience became acquainted with the works of Caspar David Friedrich and Hans Zatzky. Their compositions were eagerly reproduced on oilcloths, popular prints, and even used as backgrounds in photo studios.
Similar themes also began to appear in naive art, but the artists reinterpreted them in their own way. In particular, different authors depict a lonely heroine waiting for her beloved, while the surrounding world seems to emphasize the romantic mood of the painting: here are swans, houses, and other characteristic details.
Another common theme is folk festivities: in summer these are joyful celebrations with fairs and dancing, and in winter — sleigh rides with troikas. At the exhibition, attention should be paid to Vasily Grigoriev’s painting “Winter Night” (1993), where he depicted precisely such a scene.
Not a copy, but a retelling
In Soviet times, a certain circle of works became familiar to almost everyone. Reproductions of paintings by Viktor Vasnetsov, Alexei Savrasov, and other renowned masters were printed in magazines and school textbooks, on posters, postcards, and calendars. For many folk art masters, especially those living in rural areas, such reproductions were the only opportunity to get acquainted with classical art. They understood that ordinary people would like to have a masterpiece — a real framed painting — in their own home, so they created their own versions.
Of course, there was no question of exact copying of the speech. The canvases of primitive artists became rather a kind of homage, a retelling of well-known plots, created through the prism of their own perception. For example, Vasnetsov’s “Alyonushka” served as the basis for numerous variations: artists from one of the artel workshops depicted a similar girl in a fancy dress by a lake with swans. The picturesque sunset, in the author’s opinion, successfully completed the composition and made it even more striking. In a similar way, they reinterpreted “The Bogatyrs,” Karl Bryullov’s “The Rider,” and other masterpieces.
On the extraterrestrial
Representatives of naive art have often reflected on the spiritual, otherworldly realm, on life and death. Many of them, in their works on religious themes, combined personal beliefs, childhood memories, and folk traditions.
One of such artists was Vasily Romanenkov (1953–2013), who first trained as a carpenter and then enrolled in the Correspondence People’s University of Arts. When creating his paintings, he often referred to the so-called folk Orthodoxy (a blend of Orthodox traditions and ancient folk beliefs). The artist vividly remembered the rituals followed in his native village in the Smolensk region, as well as local convictions, which he later immortalized. For example, the painting “In Memory of the Fallen Warrior” depicts the afterlife as a continuation of earthly life: the souls of the deceased await the Last Judgment but live according to the usual village way of life, albeit somewhere in another world.
Another example of reinterpreting religious themes is the work of Katya Medvedeva (1937). The artist conveys her own interpretation of the country’s history, combining sacred images with real historical figures. In the painting “The Awakening of Russia,” the artist depicts the flying Virgin with an infant, but he lacks a halo: in fact, this is not Jesus Christ, as one might have thought, but Nikita Khrushchev.
Artist-writers
Many naive masters were not only painters but also self-taught writers: they gave their paintings original titles (just recall the naive Pushkiniana of Pavel Leonov and the work “A.S. Pushkin Arrived in the Caucasus, Greets the Caucasian People. The Honored Guest is Welcomed with a Concert”), accompanied the works with captions, comments, and reflections, sometimes turning them into peculiar diaries.
Ivan Nikiforov (1897–1971), a classic of domestic naive art, created the novel “The Counterfeiters” in the late 1960s, with each spread accompanied by his own illustrations. At one time, another of his novels, “NEP,” attracted the attention of artists; Roland Bykov wanted to adapt it into a film, but that never happened.
Text became an important part of Katya Medvedeva’s creativity as well. She often signed her drawings with simple but apt lines. For example, on the black-and-white drawing “The Golden Fish,” created in 1999, she wrote: “The Golden Fish. Many, many, very many people want to control the golden fish.”
The exhibition will be open until February 7. You can buy a ticket through the service “Mosbilet”.
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