© Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Irina Antonova attends a occasion of the centennial of Moscow's Pushkin State Museum of exceptional Arts in 2012. Irina Antonova, an artwork historian who led the Pushkin Museum in Moscow for more than a half-century, defiantly exhibiting masterpieces as soon as banned via the communist regime and defending the so-called trophy paintings looted by the red army from Nazi Germany, died Nov. 30 at a health center in Moscow. She changed into 98.
The trigger turned into acute cardiovascular failure advanced by the radical coronavirus, in response to an announcement via her longtime skilled domestic, formally the Pushkin State Museum of best Arts.
together with the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Pushkin Museum, inaugurated in 1912 because the Alexander III Museum of great Arts, is one of the preeminent artistic associations in Russia.
Ms. Antonova joined the Pushkin upon her college graduation in 1945, a month earlier than the end of World warfare II. A specialist within the Italian Renaissance, she grew to be director in 1961 and remained in that role unless 2013, when she assumed the title of president. in the overseas press, she become often described as a grande dame of Russian cultural life.
"Communism fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, but some things in Moscow not ever change," a new York instances reporter dryly observed in 2002. "on the State Pushkin Museum of quality Arts, Irina A. Antonova remains the director."
She described the early years of her employment as "a terribly sad time," when the complete museum become commandeered to screen gifts to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. beneath Stalin, and for years after his demise in 1953, officially sanctioned paintings emphasized a socialist realist glorification of the heroic proletariat. many of the museum's most prized holdings have been consigned to storage.
"for thus decades, we weren't allowed to reveal what we had in our collections," Ms. Antonova told the German ebook Der Spiegel in 2012. "Renoir, Matisse, Picasso and Cézanne were regarded formalistic and bourgeois artists."
through unyielding get to the bottom of, Ms. Antonova helped resurrect the works of these artists and others, reminiscent of Marc Chagall and Wassily Kandinsky, who had been regarded as traitors for having left the Soviet Union for the West.
In 1974, in accordance with the times, Ms. Antonova threatened to resign if she became now not permitted to reveal the exuberantly colorful works of French painter Henri Matisse, a prime exponent of the creative move known as Fauvism.
The equal 12 months, she arranged for Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa to be transported to Moscow from the Louvre in Paris and displayed on the Pushkin in the back of bulletproof glass — considered one of a couple of celebrated exchanges she orchestrated all over the cold war.
In collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, additionally in Paris, she established a groundbreaking exhibition, "Moscow-Paris," in 1981, with works via Chagall and Kandinsky, among other Russian and French artists. other Soviet museum directors had balked at such an idea.
"The director of the State Tretyakov Gallery referred to, 'Over my lifeless physique,' " Ms. Antonova advised the la times in 2003. "I observed that we are going to put on this exhibition, and we won't want a lifeless body." When the show opened, she noted, individuals "poured here to look their own artists, our personal national artwork, which for a long time that they had been denied."
another category of art that spent a long time in storage on the Pushkin and in different repositories — although for diverse motives — have been the hundreds of works of paintings taken from Germany by means of the Soviet military within the last days of World warfare II. For years, Soviet officers and museum directors, Ms. Antonova among them, denied knowledge of their existence.
within the Nineteen Nineties, when the "trophy paintings" became published and at last exhibited — prompting protests from the German government — Ms. Antonova steadfastly defended its area in Russia. The works had been a kind of reparations, she argued, for the innumerable works Germany had destroyed or stolen from the Soviet Union all over the battle.
"To be thoroughly clear, the challenge of trophy art is basically one in all an moral nature," she instructed Der Spiegel. "It has to do with ethical and not so a lot economic compensation for Russia. One can't quite simply invade a country, wreck its museums and check out to stamp out the roots of its tradition, because the Germans did. this is a historical lesson for the total world."
A centerpiece of the disputed art became a trove of gold treasures from historic Troy discovered through Heinrich Schliemann, an newbie German archaeologist, in the late 19th century. They had been hidden at the Berlin Zoo at the conclusion of World battle II, found out there by means of the Soviets, and finally secreted away in repositories of the Pushkin. Ms. Antonova displayed the collection in 1996 in an demonstrate that attracted overseas attention, and controversy.
If the Soviets had erred, she noted, that they had carried out so in now not exhibiting the works past.
"It was one of the most stupidities of that duration," she instructed the manhattan instances in 2002. "In 1945, after the conflict, all and sundry knew that some things got here to the museum, however no one turned into definitely working on them. It changed into dull as a result of we should still have from the very first noted that it belongs to Russia, because it was compensation for the giant, extraordinary harm carried out to our country. every little thing should had been put on screen right away."
© Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty images Ms. Antonova, core, receives a focus from Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Italian major Minister Silvio Berlusconi, left, on the Kremlin in 2004. Irina Alexandrovna Antonova changed into born in Moscow on March 20, 1922. Her father became a diplomat on the Soviet Embassy in Berlin, the place the family unit resided from 1929 to 1933.
Ms. Antonova had these days comprehensive her first yr at institution when Germany invaded Russia in 1941 and labored at an ammunition manufacturing facility and as a nurse at a armed forces sanatorium all over the battle.
"all over my first operation, I needed to cling a leg whereas the surgeon amputated it," she instructed Der Spiegel. "all of sudden i used to be keeping it in my hand. i used to be stunned."
She studied paintings heritage at Moscow State tuition and graduated in 1945. The adventure of working on the Pushkin, the place the reproductions of her institution textbooks were changed by exact works of art, exhilarated her.
in accordance with a couple of debts, as a younger museum employee, she helped unload or catalogue early deliveries of trophy paintings from Germany.
despite the struggling that Russians continued beneath communism, Ms. Antonova instructed Der Spiegel in 2012 that "perhaps I'm going to disappoint you now, however I haven't misplaced faith in socialism to today. It's evident that Stalin changed into a tyrant. We chose the wrong path to socialism in the Soviet Union. but that doesn't suggest that the idea is nugatory."
in the last period of her tenure of director on the Pushkin, she publicly called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to rebuild a state museum of Western artwork that was destroyed below Stalin and whose holdings had been break up between the Pushkin and the Hermitage. The decision no longer to rebuild the museum, she argued, amounted to adherence to "a decree of Stalin."
Her attraction, which the Hermitage antagonistic, sparked a contretemps that via some debts contributed to her departure as director. She became 91 on the time.
Reflecting on her toughness at the museum, she preferred to shaggy dog story that she had one husband and one job her entire existence. Survivors consist of a son, Boris, who according to the artwork Newspaper changed into severely disabled.
additionally reflecting on her longevity, she advised Der Spiegel that "I serve art."
"Politicians come and go," she noted, "but art is everlasting."
© Andrey Smirnov/AFP/Getty photos Ms. Antonova in Moscow in 2013. read more Washington post obituaries
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