TOKYO, JAPAN.- The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, Government of Moscow, Moscow Department of Culture, Russian Academy of Arts, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Embassy of the Russian Federation in Japan and Art Impression Inc. present The Spring-Time of Russian Avant-garde - Works from the collection of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in an unprecedented show at four Japanese museums. For the first time ever, Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents works from the permanent collection in a large-scale exhibition in Japan. The Spring-Time of Russian Avant-garde project brings together 70 paintings and sculptures by the leading artists of the first decades of the 20th century. Among these masters are Kazimir Malevich, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Alexander Archipenko, Pavel Filonov, Marc Chagall, Niko Pirosmani, and many others. The show investigates key issues in the evolution of the avant-garde in the 1910s-1020s, such as Western influences, abstraction, and neo-primitivism.

The traveling exhibition opens first today at the Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo and will be on view through August 17. It will then travel to the Suntory Museum, Osaka (September 25 – November 3, 2008); The Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu (November 11 – December 25, 2008); The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama (February 7 – March 22, 2009).