“Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism” an Art Exhibition Sponsored by Alfa Bank Has Been Awarded as a Best Monographic Museum Show in the USA in 2002-2003
12 Jan 2004

This critically acclaimed major traveling exhibition of Russian suprematist artist Kazimir Malevich has been co-organized by the Menil Foundation, Inc., Houston, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York City and curated by Matthew Drutt, Chief Curator of the Menil Collection. The exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York has been sponsored by Alfa Bank. "It is a pleasure for us to collaborate with Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on bringing this important exhibition to New York. In sponsoring a show of this importance, Alfa Bank is privileged to reaffirm our support of cultural excellence worldwide", says Alfa Bank's President Peter Aven. At a ceremony that will be held in New York on the evening of January 12, 2004, the International Association of Art Critics/USA will present its 2002-2003 AICA Awards to museums and galleries nationally for excellence in the conception and realization of exhibitions. Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism was the first exhibition to focus exclusively on this defining moment in the artist's career and brought together approximately 100 paintings, drawings, and objects drawn from major public and private collections around the world, including works that have never been shown in the West before. Kazimir Malevich has long been celebrated as one of the seminal founders of non-objective art in the 20th century. Between 1915 and 1932, he developed a system of abstract painting called Suprematism, an art of pure form meant to be universally comprehensible regardless of cultural or ethnic origin. Like his contemporaries Piet Mondrian and Vasily Kandinsky, Malevich created an artistic utopia that became the secular equivalent of religious painting-in his case intending to replace the ubiquitous icon of the Russian home-creating works meant to evoke higher states of spiritual consciousness. The International Association of Art Critics/USA Awards are given in recognition of exceptional work by artists, curators, gallerists, critics, scholars, and cultural institutions. AICA is the only organization to formally recognize excellence in this cultural arena. The annual AICA Award is the art-world equivalent to those given by the New York film Critics Circle and the Drama Desk. Each year the Association invites its nearly 400 members to vote for the best exhibitions created during that season. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation was founded in 1937 to realize four basic objectives: the collection, preservation, interpretation, and presentation of objects of twentieth-century visual culture. Today, the Guggenheim has grown to encompass new concerns. Currently, the Guggenheim Foundation administers a collection of museums and exhibition spaces around the world. These are the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin; and the Guggenheim Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas. The Guggenheim has extended its reach not only through its network of international locations and alliances, but also through its expanding permanent collection and increasingly diverse schedule of special exhibitions and programs. The Guggenheim maintains a premier collection of late 19th Ч to early 21st-century art, with significant holdings of artworks by Joseph Beuys, Constantin Brancusi, Paul Cezanne, Marc Chagall, Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Fernand Leger, Robert Mapplethorpe, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, and Richard Serra, among many others. The collection also features significant collection of video, photography, new media, and installation art by established and emerging artists. The Menil Foundation, Inc. was established in 1954 by John and Dominique de Menil as a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to humanitarian causes and to the arts. Opened in 1987, The Menil Collection houses the founders' collection of some 15,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings and photographs. Ranging from Palaeolithic to Contemporary art, it is considered to be one of the most important privately assembled collections of the twentieth century. Alfa Bank is Russia's largest private bank. Support for Russian art is high on Alfa Bank's list of cultural and educational priorities. Throughout its 12-year history the Bank has sponsored many major projects aimed at promoting Russian culture, preserving artistic and historical treasures and encouraging young talent. For more information please visit www.guggenheim.org and www.alfabank.com and see articles attached.

Alfa-Bank Russia

Alfa-Bank, founded in 1990, has developed rapidly to become one of Russia's largest privately owned banks. It provides a full range of banking services — corporate banking, retail banking, investment banking, asset management and trade finance. The Bank has 229 branches over nine time zones in Russia, Kazakhstan and the Netherlands and subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and the United States.

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