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# Russian Artists and Spain at the “Images of Spain” Exhibition at the Pushkin Museum
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/dlia-russkikh-u-kotorykh-v-izbytke-byli-voobrazhenie-ili-dengi-poezdki-po-evrope-nosili-pochti-ritualnyi-kharakter/
- Published: 2023-12-10T10:53:54.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:50:25.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Art, Moscow, Museums, Observations

"For Russians who had an abundance of imagination or money, travel in Europe took on an almost ritual character. Those concerned with their health, and at the same time stirred by roulette, set off for Baden-Baden; lovers of the beautiful hastened to Rome; in search of adventure they looked in at Paris. For an education they went to Berlin, while the opposition had taken a fancy to Geneva. In this way everyone found weighty reasons to take to the road. Journeys to Spain had no extraneous motives, and were explained by nothing other than the wish to get to know Spain," writes Fernández Sánchez in *Russian Travellers in Spain in the Nineteenth Century*.

Spain is not the main theme in conversations about the Russian emigration and about Europe through the eyes of the first tourists from Russia. All the more valuable, then, to learn the names of the Russian artists who drew inspiration from Spain.

The exhibition "Images of Spain" at the Gallery of European and American Art of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts presents a kaleidoscope of the artistic impressions of Russian painters of Spain, and not only of those who criss-crossed the country and left travel diaries, but also of those who never visited Spain and only dreamed of it, like the artist Vasily Shukhaev, who created a series of sketches for *The Spanish Priest* in the camps, and Vera Yermolayeva, who worked on illustrations to Cervantes after being sentenced to death in 1937.

The exhibition acquaints us with the impressions of Repin, Surikov, Konchalovsky, Larionov and Goncharova, Yakovlev, Korovin, Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Klein, Gorbatov and of our contemporaries Francisco Infante, Leonid Tishkov, Vinogradov and Dubossarsky.

Thanks to "Images of Spain" I saw for the first time in the flesh the drawings of my favourite poet, Maximilian Voloshin. An entire room is devoted to images from *Don Quixote*. There is a room on the culture of Spain as the Russians imagined it. Separately runs the theme of sympathy with the Civil War, with newsreel footage, photographs and documents on display.

Perhaps for the first time in a long while it was here that I felt the significance of curatorial work, and I wish to pay my respects to Yelena Kamenskaya and Darya Kolpashnikova. This is an exhibition one wants to look at and discuss; it makes one feel deeply, and rejoice.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_10632@10-12-2023_13-53-54.jpg)