Exhibition Opening of ‘Unexpected Eisenstein’

On 17 February, the exhibition ‘Unexpected Eisenstein’ opened at GRAD Gallery. A wide public witnessed for the first time the graphic works of the great director: his sketches for theatre and film, satirical caricatures and drawings from his private archive. In total, more than 60 works were included in the exhibition, as well as documents relating to the two month period when Eisenstein lived in Great Britain in 1929. At that time, Eisenstein not only visited the traditional tourist attractions, but also gave lectures for people working in the film industry and at Cambridge University, as well being invited as guest of honour to a dinner at Trinity College Cambridge.

“Until I began working on the exhibition, I hadn’t understood quite how multifaceted Eisenstein is,” the director of GRAD Gallery and one of the curators of the the project, Elena Sudakova. explained in an interview with Russian Gap. “Everything that populates the earth and everything that happens on it were for Eisenstein inextricably connected to each other. For example, he wanted to write a spherical book, where “hyperlinks” would be visible: one reference would follow another, but they would all be open. You could say that he anticipated the internet. Eisenstein was a pioneer in everything. For example, already in the fourties he was writing about 3D cinema, with a perfect understanding of the route that the development of cinematography would take.

In connection with the exhibition, GRAD Gallery is holding a series of lectures on the history of Soviet cinema from the revolution until Perestroika. Apart from this, an international symposium will be held in London in April, dedicated to the legacy of Eisenstein, organised with the support of the Courtauld Institute of Art, GRAD Gallery and the fund Kino Klassika.

The exhibition will run until 30 April.

Photo: Natalia Tarasova