Museum of Naive Art

Everyone has heard and many love Alla Pugacheva’s song about a million scarlet roses and an artist in love with a warm heart. But few people know that the prototype for this song was the genius artist Pirosmanishvili. And no one except specialists has heard of other self-taught painters in the vastness of our Motherland. Although, for example, all of France is proud of Henri Rousseau, who also wrote in the style of primitivism. This “blank spot” on the map of Russian culture was filled by the new Museum of Naive Art.

Artist's spirit

The museum is located in a stone mansion built in 1907. This is the oldest building in Novogireevo, a modern district of Moscow. And even earlier, there was a workshop of the famous Levitan, who came here with his students in the summer. Young artists painted old linden trees in the linden alley. And the master corrected the youth and gave them advice. In his free time, he walked along the alley and admired the flower garden. Maybe the spirit of Levitan still hovers in these places? How else can one explain the fact that an art museum is located here?

Museum affairs

The birthday of the new museum was June 23, 1998. Since 2012, the Museum of Naive Art has received full recognition from the state and is now funded from the state budget, like other cultural institutions in Moscow.

This museum is unique - it is the only one in Russia that is engaged in the popularization of naive art through exhibitions and preserving the best works of naive artists.
Every three years, the museum opens its doors to an international festival, which brings together outsider artists and fans of naive art from all over the world.
In the museum collection you can see a collection of paintings, graphics, wooden sculptures and interesting works of decorative and applied art.
The Festnaive project includes exhibitions, scientific conferences and creative meetings in such artistic movements as art brut, naive and outsider art. It shows the entire retrospective of naive creativity in the 20th and 21st centuries, not only in Russia, but also abroad.

In addition to the building where exhibitions and displays are held, the museum owns a not very large but cozy park. This place was chosen by local residents for walks.

Naive art is a mirror of the soul

Just as the green building of the Museum of Naïve Art immediately catches the eye among ordinary buildings, so the works of primitivist artists stand out against the background of works of other movements. Upon closer examination and comprehension, naive paintings and figurines turn out to be filled with deep meaning, fullness of life and bright colors. It's like looking into the eyes of a child, in which so many feelings are hidden, although he is not able to express it in words.

Where do you get such impressions from seemingly simple works? Probably the whole point is that this is inexhaustible folk creativity - the source of all other cultural heritage. It is like a small stream from which a wide river is born. If this stream dries up, there will be no mighty river. And every naive master is like a small drop in this life-giving stream. Creative search, an independent path to the heights of professionalism sometimes gives such amazing and unexpected results that cannot be found in classical art schools.

Find yourself there

The peculiarity of naive art is that it is accessible to everyone. To engage in such creativity, you don’t need money to study at an art school. You don’t even need talent in the sense that the layman’s brain, ossified in patterns, understands it. The only thing that is needed is the desire for self-expression, and for this it is necessary that in the artist’s soul there is something that he wants to tell the world about. Naive art does not tolerate spiritual emptiness or closedness.

Everything real and trusting looks at us from the works of naive masters. And sometimes we lack precisely these qualities in modern life. It’s worth going to the Museum of Naive Art if only to plunge into the bright, untainted world of sincerity and, perhaps, find yourself there.

Address: Moscow, Soyuzny Prospekt, 15a, nearest metro station - Novogireevo station.

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