Marc Chagall's graphics from the Vitebsk museum collection will be exhibited in Finland

For the summer of 2015, an exhibition of Marc Chagall's graphic illustrations for Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" is planned to be held in Finland – 96 etchings from 1923-1925 from the collection of the Marc Chagall Museum in Vitebsk.

Museum Director Lyudmila Khmelnitskaya said that an agreement on this was reached during a recent meeting with Minerva Keltanen, director of the Helsinki Art Museum named after Sinebrychoff. It is the only museum in Finland that houses the most valuable masterpieces of painting by old masters of the 14th-19th centuries in the country, which were once transferred to the state by the owners of the precious collection, Paul and Fanny Sinebrychoff. Exhibitions of various 20th-century artists of world renown are also held here. The initiative of the Helsinki museum is supported by the Embassy of Belarus in Finland. Preparations for the implementation of the international project, which requires considerable organizational effort, have already begun.

Works from the collection of the Marc Chagall Museum are in demand. Currently, there is a waiting list for their exhibition abroad. For the exhibition "Marc Chagall and the Artists of the European Avant-Garde" from the Vitebsk museum's collection in 2014, a request was received from the Mark Rothko Art Centre in Daugavpils (Latvia). In 2016, Chagall's works are expected in Wroclaw (Poland), which will be designated as the European Capital of Culture at that time.

Nataliya Krupitsa, "Vitbychi"