The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow opened Fragile Art: Pastels from the Graphics Collection, 18th–Early 20th Century on 27 March 2026, giving visitors a chance to see works that spend most of their existence locked away in museum vaults. The show runs through 1 November.
Around 150 works from the gallery’s own holdings are on display, including pieces by Mikhail Vrubel, Valentin Serov, Ilya Repin, Alexandre Benois, Konstantin Somov, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Alexey Venetsianov, and Nicholas Roerich. The selection spans more than a century of pastel in Russia, tracing the medium from its aristocratic origins to its embrace by the early twentieth-century avant-garde.
The medium’s extreme vulnerability dictates the exhibition’s conditions. According to curator Irina Shuvalova, light degrades the paper support and loosens the pigment’s bond, ultimately rendering a work nearly invisible. The show occupies the gallery’s dedicated graphics halls in Lavrushinsky Lane, where specialised lighting, temperature, and humidity controls provide the most protective climate in the building.
The exhibition is the second instalment in the Tretyakov’s series focused on materials and techniques of works on paper. As well as the historical arc, the hang invites a closer look at what the medium offered individual artists: the softness that suited Zinaida Serebriakova’s figure studies, the atmospheric qualities that defined Mstislav Dobuzhinsky’s Petersburg views, the intimate fragility that runs through Vrubel’s late work.
