The State Tretyakov Gallery is one of the largest museums in the world. The scale of the collecting activities of Moscow merchant and manufacturer Pavel Tretyakov and his brother Sergey was simply enormous. Today, the museum's collection includes over 180,000 items, among which are thousands of works of painting. The collection expanded over decades, but Vasily Vereshchagin's paintings remained the only ones associated with Turkestan and Uzbekistan in particular. This began to change after the 1917 revolution when the gallery became state property. In the 1920s and 1930s, the funds were purposefully replenished with works by masters of painting, sculpture, and graphics that demonstrated the uniqueness of national artistic cultures.
For example, an exhibition of contemporary painting from Uzbekistan opened in September 1934 in Moscow at the State Museum of Oriental Art, which was talked about as a unique national phenomenon. It was during this time that the Tretyakov Gallery acquired the painting "Khivin girl" by the renowned Uzbek painter Pavel Benkov from this exhibition, making it the first work by an Uzbek painter in the Tretyakov Gallery's collection.
In "Khivin girl" one of his first fundamental works, Pavel Benkov depicted both the peculiarities of Uzbek life and the vibrant colors of national attire.
Pavel Benkov (1879–1949) was a graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1930, he settled in Samarkand. He created numerous sketches and paintings depicting the bustling eastern bazaars, Uzbek tea houses with resting people, and sun-drenched streets. Until his death (for nineteen years), Pavel Benkov taught at the Samarkand Art School. Considering his immense contribution to training many generations of artists in Uzbekistan, his name is honored by the Republican Art College in Tashkent.
You can learn more about this topic in the book-album "The Collection of Art in the State Tretyakov Gallery" (Volume III) (Moscow, Russia) from the series "The Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan".
The general sponsor of the project is the oilfield services company Eriell-Group.