On December 1, 2017, the exhibition project “Yuri Cooper. Illustrations to the tragedy of A.S. Pushkin “Mozart and Salieri” from the collection of VOKHM them. I.N. Kramskoy”.

The project was implemented as part of a grant from the Voronezh Region government to create creatively significant projects in the field of culture and art.

In the center of the exhibition there is the book “Mozart and Salieri” by A.S. Pushkin, illustrated by Yuri Cooper – one of the most famous contemporary Russian-American artists. The museum’s collection holds one of fifty copies of this unique work – the “artist’s book”. Its form is traditional for this genre – the book consists of separate sheets that are folded into a special folder-case. From the beginning to the end, the artist is the author of the created book, working not only on the content and illustrations, but also all other elements of the sheet. At the same time, the text of the book becomes only one of the components of a complex artistic message.

The specificity of the subject does not allow to expose the “artist’s book” by Yuri Cooper in public access to museum visitors, see the inner author’s design and original lithographs, each of which represents an independent work of art and signed by the artist. The project “Yuri Cooper. Illustrations to the tragedy of A.S. Pushkin “Mozart and Salieri” from the collection of VOKHM them. I.N. Kramskoy »solves this problem with the help of computer copies made in the size of the originals. The exhibition features 17 illustrations. Their main motive – the artist’s memories of the museum-reserve “Mikhailovskoye”, where Pushkin worked on “Little Tragedies.”

“… I wandered in my thoughts slowly, as if in a dream, listening to the creaking of floorboards and wandering around the labyrinth of rooms in Mikhailovskoye. There was a grave silence, gazing intently at frozen objects, it seemed to me that they were bewitched and resembled ghosts. Here it is – a world of absolute silence and tranquility. ”
Yu. Cooper.

The intricacies of the relations of two eminent musicians of the second half of the 18th century are embodied by the artist in an exquisite figure of the finest lace, dried flowers, apples, goose feathers. They as personal things – witnesses of the vanished moments of the life of the heroes and the author of the work..

“Unexpectedly, I imagined myself as a private detective, who many years later returned to the place of an irreparable tragedy, trying in vain to find a clue missed by previous researchers; it seemed to me that my calling was an undisclosed crime. I again and again looked at the patterns on the dusty glass glasses standing in the old cupboard. My fervent imagination asked: from what kind of glass could Mozart drink? And so, at the bottom of one of them, I could clearly see the tiny crystals of poison, and not the dust that had been left since the days of Arina Rodionovna “.
Yu Cooper.

The exhibition will last until December 17, 2017.

The entrance fee for all categories of citizens is 50 rubles.

Photo and video are prohibited.