PARIS, September 21 (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday inaugurated at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris the inauguration of the exhibition dedicated to the art collection put together by the Russian industrial brothers Ivan and Mikhail Morozov at the turn of the Twentieth century.

Macron was accompanied by his wife Brigitte and Bernard Arnault, the French luxury mogul and owner of the Foundation, who helped cut bureaucratic and diplomatic formalities to make the show a reality.

The exhibition brings together 200 masterpieces by leading French artists such as Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh alongside Russian masters including Malevich and Korovin, all on loan from museums in Russia.

It marks a further step in the “Trianon Dialogue”, an initiative aimed at strengthening ties between French and Russian civil society, in particular through the cultural cooperation launched in 2017 by Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the Elysée in a press release.

This is the Foundation’s second exhibition to major Russian art collectors, following the Sergei Shchukin Collection exhibition in 2016, which attracted 1.3 million visitors.

This is the first time that the collection has traveled outside Russia since its creation thanks to the Foundation’s partnership with the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, the Pushkin National Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and the State Tretyakov Gallery. in Moscow.

Like the Shchukin collection, most of the Morozov brothers’ works of art were nationalized after the 1917 revolution, and then absorbed mainly into the collections of Russian museums. The exhibition runs from September 22, 2021 to February 22, 2022 (Report by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten)

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