Perm may be of some interest from the artistic point of view. Perm has interesting art galleries, including those of modern art. But coming to the city you should first visit the State Art Gallery to the «Perm Gods».
Now the collections of the gallery are stored in the buildings of Transfiguration Cathedral, the former metropolitan cathedral of Perm. By 2017 it is planned to erect a new building for the gallery near the cathedral on the bank of the Kama. After that the cathedral will be returned to the church.
The collection of Russian and foreign painters is on the ground floor. It has the pictures of Aivazovsky, Vasnetsov, Kuindzhi, Repin and many other famous painters. A separate exposition is devoted to Perm school of book illustrations.
The most valuable collection – «Perm Gods» – is on the second floor of the art gallery. The tradition of making wooden sculptures of Jesus Christ was spread in the north of Perm Krai in the 17th century. The Orthodox Church forbade to have the figures of the God in the temples, seeing in them the pagan idols of the pre-Christian period.
However, neither bans nor orders of the Synod could stop the development of this tradition in the northern villages of the Kama Region. And the priests had to put up with the situation so that not to lose their parishioners.
During 1923-26 N. Serebrennikov, the founder of Perm Art Gallery, arranged 6 expeditions to the northern districts of Perm Krai. They were engaged in collecting these wooden sculptures. Ivan Grabar, the most famous Soviet art historians, took part in one of those expeditions. As a result, the high artistic value of this collection was acknowledged on the all-Russian level.
