MOSCOW.- “The Greatest Hits” exhibition held in the eight halls of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art will feature more than 70 works and objects by Kirill Danelia from public and private collections. These works are from “New York Subway”, “Nocturne de NYC”, “Due Limits”, “Chairs” and other series. The first exhibition by the artist was held in 1989, so this is an anniversary show – 20 years later.

The son of a famous filmmaker, he went to study directing at the Moscow Art Theatre School. This beginning did not lead him to the world of theatre and cinema, but allowed him to follow his own artistic path early. An artist and a successful gallerist, professional tattooist, fascinated by American cars of the 1950s and Harley Davidson motorcycles, a bourgeois and a father, Kirill Danelia is a man of versatile creativity, which determined the key meridians of his life.

Danelia reinvents the traditional genre of still life. He creates a unique marvelous world using absolutely mundane functional things, like billiards, frames of musical instruments, records, burnt coffee pots, chairs, tins, old playing cards or match boxes. Devoid of their materiality, objects turn into symbols, they acquire “a nostalgic aura”. Time and memory are the artist’s important motifs; the artist looks for old and dusty remnants of the “temps perdue” at flea markets, auction houses, and antique stores all over the world.

The memory of objects and their timeless dialogues in the works by Kirill Danelia allude to the art of Robert Rauschenberg and artists of the Lianosovo group. As the artist puts is, his dearest image is “that of a Moscow kitchen. That’s where Soviet pop-art originated. And we, all of us, come from there. There were times when we all lived in those stereotypes…”

Personal shows by Kirill Danelia were held in Moscow and other Russian cities, in the USA, Switzerland, UK, and Ireland. His works are held in the collections of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the State Tretyakov Gallery, Ivanovo Regional Art Museum, Tver Regional Picture Gallery, and many private collections all over the world.