Tretyakov Gallery During The War Years
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Today I will tell you how the Tretyakov Gallery masterpiece was kept in 1941, and how they were restored.
Within days of the outbreak of hostilities, the gallery staff began the evacuation process. First, the most valuable are met. People work from morning until late at night.
The main burden of loading work is done by specialists in restoration and requires not only knowledge, but also resourcefulness. Because the painting layers of I. Repin's "Ivan the Terrible and Ivan's son on November 16, 1581" were in a bad state after a fanatic attack, it was placed between a board covered with a thick cloth and stuck in a container with a spring.
Small canvas are protected with the help of "cassette" technique. The great paintings of Vasnetsov, Ivanov, Surikov wrapped in coils, are placed in a galvanized iron cylinder and packed in containers. At the end of July, cargo arrived in Novosibirsk.
The employee gallery in the Novosibirsk branch, which is responsible for storing the collection, faces an unforeseen danger. They fought with moths, rats, mice, cement dust, water leaks and fires in the chambers of their careless neighbors, holding off unknown people who had invaded the storage of paintings.
In 1943, an order was issued to inventory the museum property in preparation for the return. The time when the work could return to Moscow, depending on the timing of the recovery of the gallery space, was destroyed by bombing. The experts inspected the building and decided that the collection of paintings can be transported back.
The order for transportation was given on October 9, 1944. In November, 572 boxes containing valuables from the Russian national art treasury arrived in Moscow.
On the night of arrival, the temperature in the building is lowered to +5. The boxes remain unloaded for several days to avoid sudden temperature changes and allow the canvas to adapt to the climate, as the collection arrives in warm dry rooms from the cold and humid climate of the Siberian autumn. Finally, the drawers were opened, the scrolls with the paintings folded, the walls and ceilings plastered, the floor was laid, and the windows were teary.
The most difficult task is to hang the pictures back, especially with large canvas - they were raised with the help of nearly thirty workers. A few days after the Victory, Tretyakov Gallery reopened for the visitors.