Sochi Art Museum

Sochi. For many years, this word was perceived as synonymous with the happy rest of workers. In 1930-1950, the period of active state myth-making of the Soviet era, together with other construction sites of communism, the resort was supposed to become an example of an embodied fairy tale. The palace representativeness of the sanatorium complexes corresponded to the program pathos of the construction of the resort for the Soviet worker: a worker and a collective farmer. To this day, the idea of Sochi as a city born of socialist construction – first invented, and then implemented by a powerful creative will, like St. Petersburg, from scratch.

Sochi is one of the myths, in the creation of which statesmen, filmmakers, poets, artists, and architects participated. But Sochi is a real city. The Soviet resort of Sochi had to shift the focus from the traditional pre-revolutionary centers of resort life of Yalta and Pyatigorsk to the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus. At the same time, among the resorts of the coast (Sukhumi, Gagra, New Athos), Sochi, a resort on Russian territory, was chosen. To date, this is a far-sighted decision, since one Russian resort has now been preserved on the entire Black Sea coast. The palette of names of architects who built Sochi is quite wide: famous architects, X1X-XX centuries, such as Merzhanov, Shchusev, Alabyan, Dushkin, brothers Vesnina, Kuznetsov, Chernopiatov and many others worked here. The outstanding architect Ivan Vladislavovich Zholtovsky designed the “Ombudsman’s House”, which now houses the Sochi Art Museum. The purpose of the institution is the administrative center. Inside are spacious corridors, like in the Academy of Arts, into which the doors of huge classrooms and lecture halls open. Subsequently, the Party Committee was located in this building, and in 1971, after the construction of the new City Committee, the Ombudsman’s building was transferred to the City Exhibition Hall, and after a five-year reconstruction on the first of October 1976, the museum opened its doors to visitors. The basis of the museum collection was created by paintings transferred by order of the Gorispolkom from Sochi health resorts. Names are almost all major artists of the realistic wing, starting with Brodsky, Gerasimov and further, Baksheev, Byalynitsky-Birulya, Kuprin, Konchalovsky, Krymov, Mashkov, Boris Yakovlev and others.

The themes of the works are mainly landscapes, still lifes, less often paintings of the compositional plan. During its thirty-year history, the museum has collected a significant number of works of Russian art in its funds and received more than six million visitors. Today, in the renovated building after major repairs on three thousand square meters of the exhibition area, works of art of different eras are exhibited - starting with the ancient Russian icon, applied art, painting and sculpture of the XVIII-XX centuries. Now it is difficult to imagine Sochi without an art museum, as well as a theater or other cultural institutions of the city. Not a single generation of Sochi residents, proud of their museum and its collection, has changed. The collection itself is constantly growing and today is represented by the names of the best Russian artists who are the pride of Russian culture, such as: Aivazovsky, Polenov, Serov, Turzhansky and others. The list of surnames can be continued, some idea of the museum can be obtained by viewing this album, which was born for our anniversary. However, there is no substitute for communication with the original works of great Russian artists.