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14.06.2021

Until 8 July 2021, 11am–6pm Thursday–Tuesday, the Evening Hall in the Catherine Park houses a free exhibition of works by artist Valery Lednev, one of those who restored the Catherine Palace after WWII.

In the Green Pilaster Room of the palace, Valery Lednev re-created the fire-destroyed ceiling plafond "A resting commander heeds the call of the muses" (1974–78) and all the painted insets around it, as well as the over-mirror painting "Nessus and Deianira". He also repainted Hubert Robert's lost "Landscape with cattle" at the Stasov Staircase.

Titled "In Memory of the Re-Creators", the exhibition commemorates his 80th anniversary and offers over thirty portraits, landscapes and still lifes tied with Tsarskoe Selo, as well as paintings showing the poet Alexander Pushkin's Lyceum years.

The centrepiece is a copy of the monumental triptych "The Re-Creators" (1985), a collective portrait of gilders, painters and carvers whose hands brought the Catherine Palace back to life after the war. The original triptych from our collection is currently traveling from Perm to Sarapul to Chelyabinsk and Novosibirsk with our large exhibition project dedicated to the restoration of the Tsarskoe Selo palaces.

At the opening of his exhibition, Valery Lednev announced his donation of two portraits to the Museum. One is of Ivan Sautov, director of Tsarskoe Selo during 1987–2007. The other portrait is of Yakov Kazakov, a legendary restorer who came to the Catherine Palace in 1963 and gave over 25 years of his life to the re-creation of ceiling plafonds.