Vadim Zakharov

DANAË

2013

Artist: Vadim Zakharov
Title of the Project: Danaë

Curator: Udo Kittelmann
Commissioner: Stella Kesaeva

Organizers: The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and Stella Art Foundation, Moscow

www.ruspavilion.ru

Venice, May 28, 2013. Vadim Zakharov’s Danaë project represents Russia at the 55th International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia. Zakharov’s installation has united the upper and lower storeys of the Pavilion in a single project for the first time in the building’s long history (the Pavilion was built in 1914 by the Russian architect Alexei Shchusev who, ten years later, would also design Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow).

The theme of the installation turns around the ancient Greek myth of Danaë,. The myth of Zeus and Danaë has inspired many famous works of art since ancient times, including the picture by Rembrandt, painted in 1636-1647 and kept in the State Hermitage Museum, where it was seriously damaged in 1985 by a man who threw sulphuric acid onto the canvas and slashed it in two places