Henri Matisse, Zorah on the Terrace, 1912-13

Pushkin Museum of Art, Moscow

The Morozov Collection in Paris

200 masterpieces of French and Russian Modern art.

With Chris Boïcos

Following the exhibition of the great Shchukin Collection in 2016/2017, this year the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is presenting the second great collection of modern art of pre-revolutionary Moscow, that of the Morozov brothers, Mikhail and Ivan.

Heirs, like Schuckin, to a great industrial textile fortune and sons of a Francophile mother, the brothers amassed at the turn of the 20th century one of the greatest private collections of French and Russian modern art. Many of the most celebrated pictures from the collection, now housed in the Pushkin Museum and Tretyakov gallery in Moscow and the Hermitage in St Petersburg, are currently on show in Paris: Van Gogh’s La Ronde des prisonniers, Cézanne’s Montagne Ste Victoire, Picasso’s, Les deux saltimbanques, Malevich’s Portrait of Mikhail Matyushin and the show stopper,’s Matisse’s Moroccan Triptych of 1912-13.

In our talk we will examine the brothers’ life and relationships with artists and dealers in Moscow and Paris before and after the Russian Revolution and look closely at the modern masterpieces that constitute their collection which traces the whole development of modern art from 1870s Impressionism to early 20th century Modernism.