Vladimir Weisberg said that he was ‘in love with classical art’. That is why art historian Elena Khlopina’s eponymous book about Vladimir Weisberg’s work, published in 2009, is so titled, as is the artist’s anniversary exhibition.

Weisberg also repeated the phrase ‘I have been studying my whole life’, absorbing and overcoming the influence of great teachers such as Ilya Mashkov and always demonstrating an endless, passionate knowledge of classical art.

The catalogue of the exhibition marking the 90^th birthday of the artist brought together 88 works from museums and private collections. The aim of the curators was to show not only ‘classic’ Weisberg but also the creative development of the artist: his early, colourful still lifes, landscape drawings, late portraits, and nudes in the form of paintings, drawings and watercolours.

In parallel, the aim was to expand on the main theme of ‘white on white’, from Still Life with a Nylon Ball (1960) and Geometry Against a White Background (1966) to the well-known compositions with geometric forms and antique sculptures that Weisberg created from the late 1960s.

The catalogue includes texts by the exhibition curators: an essay about the artist’s work by candidate of art history Elena Khlopina and an interview with the chief curator of In artibus Foundation, Elena Rudenko, with Boris Kasatkin, a student of Weisberg, about art and his beloved teacher.