Realism and figurative art are the main theme of “Together: 2015 Gallery Group Exhibition”.  In this year’s seven parallel exhibitions, we specifically curate “Land of Fertility-Mountain Art Foundation’s Russian Masters Collection”.  All the artists and their works in the show had great influence on Chinese realism painting.  Through reference between one another, we hope we could understand more about the unique value of Chinese and foreign artists who explorer in this area.

The works in “Land of Fertility-Mountain Art Foundation’s Russian Masters Collection” are carefully selected from thousands of Russian oil paintings collected by Mountain Art Foundation over the years; 17 Russian masters, 106 pieces of artworks exhibited here from the representative painters of the Society for Traveling Art, such as Ilya Yefimovich Repin, Vasily Ivanovich Surikov, Isaac Ilyich Levitan to the Realism painters, who grew up during the period of Soviet Union, like Konstantin Mefodyevich Maksimov, Andrei Milnikov, etc., presented diverse exploration of Social Realism.

Russia has a long history of cultural tradition; Russian art has become one of the most important parts of art history.  Furthermore, it had profound influence to Chinese artists. After the foundation of People’s Republic of China, the Chinese literature and art communities started to imitate the Russian realism literature and arts; Russian art was introduced to China through various channels, and became a source of study for many influential artists. For example, some of Maksimov’s works showed Chinese local conditions and customs, prove he was in China teaching art at the time.

Since the beginning of 1990’s, Mr. Lin Mingzhe, who established Mountain Art Foundation, courageously went out to Russia, searched and collected large quantity of rare Russian paintings and documents.  By his great efforts, we could appreciate the wonderful Russian paintings we see today; I am here also expressing my highest respect for Mountain Art Foundation which has been dedicated to art and its promotion for many years.