In October 30, in the halls of the Mikhailovsk (Engineers) Castle opens exhibition «From the collection of G. Levitin. 1914-1982 », organized by the 110 th anniversary of the Russian Museum. The exhibition presents 35 paintings and 70 graphic works of leading masters of art the first half of XX century from the Russian Museum.

Collection by Gregory M. Levitin is one of the largest and most informative in the museum collection. G. Levitin collect his collection for many years. She had more than 5 thousand paintings and graphics, and consisted of two sections - theatrical decorative art (sketches of scenery and costumes for numerous productions) and the easel of the twentieth century artists. It started collected before the war, when Levitin met then made friendship relations with a famous theatrical figure, translator, archivists, and a collector A.G. Movshenzon, brother of writer Elizabeth Polonsky, and later received his first series of works created in the early twentieth century.

After the death of G. Levitin, according his last will, the relatives appealed to the two Leningrad Museum - Russian Museum and the Museum of Theatrical and Musical Arts with a request to divide the collection of materials and take them as a gift. Thus, a collection of Russian Museum acquired 130 paintings and more than 2 thousands of graphic works. Thanks to Levitin collections in the collection of Russian Museum appear new names, talented and original, but not well-known. This real discovery was, for example, pre-war gouaches of A. Anushinoy, theater artist and unusual illustrator.

  Gregory Levitin was born in a family of doctors in the city of Tartu. Soon the family moved to Pskov, and in 1923 in Petrograd. In the years of 1927-1930 Levitin worked in a school circle at the Hermitage, where in 1931 graduated from the course until 1937, worked as a tour guide. When he had a mash on theater, a young man engaged in studying of the history of decorative art, but art did not become his profession. Following his father foot steps, in 1937 he finished second Medical Institute and received a diploma, went to work as the main hospital doctor in Karelia. Draw to the color at the beginning of the war, Levitin passed a long way of the Great Patriotic War and remained in service until May 1947. He was awarded with two battle and honor medals. After the demobilization and return to Leningrad, more than thirty years worked in tuberculosis hospitals.

   After the war, Levitin has not left his old hobbies, and over the years has become a prominent researcher and expert on Russian theater and decorative arts. Continuing medical practice, he found time and energy for to organize exhibitions, for writing articles and books about the masters of Russian stage and has taught at the Leningrad Theater Institute (LGITMiK), lectured to students Conservatory.

   Like any collector, Levitin had his own passions, priorities and preferences. He put together a collection that allows to consider the development stages of drawing, as an independent artistic phenomenon and evaluate its uniqueness and diversity. In Levitin`s collections clearly identified two groups of works that characterize the long-established graphic school in Moscow and St. Petersburg (Leningrad), who for decades maintained its principled qualitative differences. Moscow represented by the artist group «Thirteen» - B. Milashevskim and D. Daranom, N. Kuzmin, and T. Mavrina, B. Rybchenkovym and A. Sofronova. Petersburg School - B. Voinovym, G. Vereisky, D. Mitrokhin, P. Basmanovym, T. Shishmarevoy.

The historical part of his collection, presented at the exhibition in St. Michael’s (Engineers) Castle, combines classic Russian art of the beginning of the century - N. Goncharov and B. Grigoriev, F. Malyavina and A. Yakovlev, P. Mituricha and P. Lvov, B. Chekrugina and K. Petrov-Vodkin. Searching the avant-garde artists led to the discovery of the true formally - plastic working methods had changed the language of fine art. These innovative features are readily detectable in the works submitted for exhibition.

Levitin`s proud were magnificent gouaches of Vera Ermolaeva. Northern and Pudostsk landscapes still preserve the main features of the creative artist’s identity. Another special affection collector - the artist Alexander Tyshlera. They connected the love of theater. In the Russian Museum workbooks productions comedy «Twelfth Night», tragicomic song «Mahnovschina» and «Caryatid», received by the Fund from the collection Levitin.

Among the paintings presented at the exhibition, the first place is occupied by the artists associated with the theater - N. Altmann, and B. Dorrer, and F. Z. Arshakuni Volosenkov. Wonderful work by K.Petrovu-Vodkin, A. Karev, A. Rusakov, A. Pakhomov. Familiarity with the authors allowed the collection of paintings B. Birger, A. Fonvizina, which often directly acquired in the workshops.

  Gregory Levitin, died in 1982. But the carefully built image of the individual fragments of a single world of art (that is perceived today as his great and varied collection), has not disappeared with the withdrawal from the life of the collector. Proof of that - an exhibition which opens in the Russian Museum.