Life and adventures of Anatoly Zverev

Every AZ Museum project offers an unexpected theme, a unique selection of works, and a creative design inspired by the curator’s vision. Here in this small building on Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street, we have already shown Zverev’s virtuoso female portraits, illustrations to Andersen’s fairy tales, Don Quixotes charging into battle, rare birds from the artist’s zoo, and Gogol’s bird-troika receding into the distance. Is there anything that can still surprise the fans of this legendary artist? Yet Zverev’s art is so vast, diverse and powerful that it keeps bringing surprises and revelations.
The current exhibition is a case in point. For the first time ever, AZ Museum is showing a foreign collection: over 250 first-rate works by Anatoly Zverev from Stockholm. They were acquired between the 1950s and the early 1970s by Dimitri Apazidis, an employee of the Swedish embassy in Moscow, and have been safeguarded for over fifty years by his sons George and Nick. Most of the works you see at the exhibition are shown to the public for the first time. This is only a small part of the enormous collection of Zverev’s art in Sweden. However, the works we brought here and displayed on the museum’s three floors make an astonishing impression in their own right.
Project curator and AZ Museum art director Polina Lobachevskaya says, “The Dimitri Apazidis Collection has over 1,500 works from Anatoly Zverev's very significant early period. We tried to select the most interesting, surprising and brilliant paintings and drawings. We hope that the exhibition will be fun. After all, Zverev was beaming, reckless, sparkling, and extremely jovial in his youth.”
A film was specially made for the exhibition by the outstanding Russian movie director Irakli Kvirikadze. You can see it on the third floor either before the visit by putting the audio guide on pause or afterwards.