Malaga's splendidly restored Tabacalera Building has only been home to the Spanish branch of the Russian State Museum of St. Petersburg since spring this year, but it already features heavily on international art lovers' itineraries. Next year, so the museum confirmed in a statement, will be even more exciting. Major name artists to be shown at the Russian Museum will include Marc Chagall and Georg Baselitz as well as works by the Jack of Diamonds group.
The intriguing current tour leads visitors through the museum on a route that displays some of the museum's most important pieces. Eventually, towards the end of the tour, art lovers come across "The Mirror", which Marc Chagall painted in 1915. Although the current display of 100 or so paintings will be leaving the museum in January 2016, when the first annual exhibition comes to a close, Marc Chagall will return, and in a big way, according to the museum's plans.
Expressing its Interest in Russian Contemporary and Avant-garde Art
As one of the most recognisable and instantly appreciated artists of the entire collection, Marc Chagall has proven to be a big draw for the Malaga branch of the Russian State Museum of St. Petersburg.
Visitors from around the globe have flocked to the museum, and residents living in Marbella, Estepona or Torremolinos who normally hurry past museums on their way to more "exciting" tourist attractions, have stopped by to see what all the fuss was about. And then they fell in love with what they saw and started asking after particular artists. Couldn't they possibly see more of them in future temporary exhibitions?
So Marc Chagall stays put, gets more display space for other works and the museum's star attraction will be augmented by Georg Baselitz's works as well as two other temporary exhibitions. One will be dedicated to the Jack of Diamonds collective and the other will feature contemporary Russian artists. That means the museum will be showing four distinct and pretty thrilling exhibitions in what will be only its second year.
The full programme will be completed in the next few weeks, before being confirmed to the general public. Before the museum opened, there had been talk of showing a major name exhibition, either with Malevich, Kandinsky or Chagall in 2016 as the focal point. Marc Chagall seems to have been the winner in this unofficial contest on who's going to be the biggest tourist draw.
Working in co-operation with the Albertina Museum of Vienna in Austria, the Russian Museum will be putting together a major exhibition of Georg Baselitz's work. Vienna houses a number of his works, displayed as an exhibition titled "Georg Baselitz - How he began". The artist's paintings and graphic works span the last 20 years and was shown in the Russian State Museum of St. Petersburg from 16th July to 19th October this year.
The Jack of Diamonds group of artists worked in the early part of the 20th century and included the elite of Russia's avant-garde: Alexandra Ekster, Ilya Mashkov and Alexander Kuprin, Natalia Goncharova and Kazimir Malevich, to name just some of the members that belonged to this illustrious group.
The fourth exhibition planned for 2016 will focus on the era of Sergei Diaghilev and works by Pavel Filonov. Staging four temporary exhibition next year means doubling its programme - and hopefully visitor numbers to ensure that the Russian State Museum of St. Petersburg will remain a feature of Malaga's art scene for many more years to come.