Boris Kustodiev was a very protean artist: he worked as an easel painter and sets designer, went in for sculpture and was in good command of various graphic techniques and painting devices. The artist performed portraits of his contemporaries, landscapes and genre scenes depicting life and flavor of Russia, particular features of the national character, daily round and feasts of the Russian province.

His art combines realistic tradition with impressionism and symbolism enriching those by elements of Russian folklore and national art. By the mid-1900s, he had created his own unique style and his own picturesque Russia – Kustodia Land.

The exposition acquaints viewers with Kustodiev’s key pictorial and graphic pieces united into thematic blocks: Family, Kustodia Land, Festivities, Theater, and Boris Kustodiev, a Graphic Artist. Russian types, a separate section, will be about merchant wives whose beauty Boris Mikhailovich praised in his paintings. It is for the first time that the exhibition will display the full set of Kustodiev’s sketches for the performance of The Flea theatricalized by Y.I. Zamyatin after N.S. Leskov’s story The Left-Handed Craftsman for the Moscow Art Theater -2 and Bolshoi Drama Theater – pinnacles in the master’s theater design activities. The exhibition will enable visitors to have a fresh look at the prominent artist’s legacy and appreciate his unique talent.