Les frères Morozov, mécènes et collectionneurs

Moscow, 1917. The wind of the Bolshevik revolution is sweeping through Russian society and establishing a new order. Art does not escape this upheaval, and Lenin nationalizes the great private collections, among them that belonging to the brothers Mikhail and Ivan Morozov. Over more than 20 years, these patrons of the arts, who were descendants of serfs and had become billionaires in the textile industry, accumulated a fabulous art collection, including works by Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Derain, and Maurice Denis. The romantic, passionate saga of the Morozov brothers intersected with the extraordinary time at the turn of the twentieth century when Russia was undergoing an unprecedented artistic rebirth known as the Silver Age. In Moscow, one of the epicentres of this renaissance, painters, composers, poets, singers, philosophers, and politicians visited the Morozov’s salons, giving rise to currents of thought that would leave a lasting mark on the evolution of the arts in Russia.