Khazine National Art Gallery, which is located in the building of the cadet school of the Kazan Kremlin, is a branch of the State Fine Arts Museum of Tatarstan. The main building of the museum is on 55, Karl Marx Street. It contains large collections of ancient Russian art and icon painting. One also can see there the expositions of European engraving and painting of the Middle Ages.
The long three-floor building of the national gallery is a classic style monument guarded by the state. It was built in 1836 by the project of an architect Pyatnitsky for one of the first Russian schools of cantonists. Later, since the second half of the 19th century, it housed the Kazan cadet school. In the Soviet period there was also accommodated a military garrison.
On the three floors of the gallery one can see the works of Tatar painters and sculptors. Of a special interest are the canvases of Baki Urmanche (1897-1990), a painter and sculptor who was born in Kul-Cherken in the east of Tatarstan and then lived and worked in Kazan and Almaty.
Also it will be very interesting to look at the pictures of Nikolai Feshin (1881-1976). He was born in Kazan but immigrated to America in 1923. His remains were transfered to Kazan in 1976. And finally, one can see the monumental canvases of a well-known Soviet painter Kharis Yakupov at the national art gallery of Kazan.
