The Erarta contemporary art museum has opened an exhibition dedicated to comics and its role in Russian modern art. It is true that comics are not a typical genre for Russian artists. That is why the idea was to acquaint visitors of the museum with some fine examples of paintings by Russian artists in this genre.
The exhibition is divided into two parts – works showing characters of American and European comic books as part of Russian culture and paintings representing Russian fairy tales in the form of a comic strip. Nearly 20 masters took part in the exhibition. Among them are such recognized artists as N. Kopeikin, K. Zvezdochyotov, and G. Litichevskiy. There will be also works of J. Gerner – a French artist who specializes in graphic arts.
As one of the goals of the Erarta museum is to make contemporary art easily understandable for the audience, a lecture called ”Comics vs. Art” was organized by the museum curators. The lecture will be given by two Russian artists – G. Litichevskiy and G. Ostretsov. They were the first to combine comics and art of painting in the Soviet Union. In 1987 they participated in an exhibition entitled “George and George.”
The highlight of the exhibition is, of course, the work by G. Litichevskiy called ”SuperAndersen.” It is a 21-meter canvas narrating the story about Snow Maiden, the daughter of Father Frost, the Russian counterpart of Santa Claus. Snow Maiden fantasized that she was the Snow Queen and decided to annihilate other characters. The only hero who can prevent her from doing this is SuperAndersen named after the famous Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen.