AZ Museum

The AZ Museum is a museum of Russian artist Anatoly Zverev (1931–1986). Anatoly Zverev was and remains one of the most significant figures in the artistic life of Moscow in the second half of the twentieth century. The AZ Museum was founded by collector and patron of the arts Natalia Opaleva and art curator Polina Lobachevskaya in 2013. The Museum building on the 2nd Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street was opened in May 2015. The basis of the collection of the Museum AZ was the personal collection of Natalia Opaleva. In 2013, the daughter of the famous collector George Kostaki, Aliki Kostaki, presented the museum with more than 700 works by Zverev, archival materials and artifacts from the collection of her father. Today, the museum has more than 1,500 works by Anatoly Zverev and over 500 works by artists of his circle - nonconformists (Plavinsky, Nemukhin, Rabin, Krasnopevtsev, Tselkov and many others). Simultaneously with the foundation of the museum, a large publishing program was developed. Books and albums with works by Anatoly Zverev were published - “100 self portraits”, “Zverev. Love”, “Anatoly Zverev's Gogoliad”, “Anatoly Zverev Draws Andersen's Fairy Tales”, “Golden Ass”, “Apulea in Illustrations by A. Zverev” (publishing group: publisher - Natalia Opaleva, author of publishing project - Polina Lobachevskaya, compiler - Natalia Volkova , editor and author of articles - Sergey Solovyov). The small space of the museum does not allow to present the entire collection at the same time. Therefore, the AZ Museum offers a consistent story about different periods and directions in the works of Anatoly Zverev. Exhibitions follow each other, turning into a kind of “iso-series”. Each new exhibition is recorded in the film and becomes a film document - a film about the life of the AZ Museum. Multimedia screens play an important role in the concept of exhibition space. They expand the real space of each of the floors and allow you to see the works of Zverev in new perspectives.