State Museum of Modern Western Art

The State Museum of Modern Western Art (Russian: Государственный музей нового западного искусства, ГМНЗИ GMNZI) was a museum in Moscow. It was based on the collection of paintings assembled by Sergei Schukin and Ivan Morozov, and nationalized by the Soviet Russia in 1918. Sergei Schukin collection was transformed into the 1st Museum of Modern Western Painting, while Ivan Morozov’s collection was made into the 2nd Museum of Modern Western Painting. In 1923, the 1st and 2nd Museums of Modern Western Painting were merged to form the State Museum of Modern Western Art.

In 1941-1944 during World War II, the collection was evacuated to Sverdlovsk.

It was shut down on 6 March 1948 by Stalin and its art pieces were split between the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

Art expert Natalia Semenova noted that “because of the dread that the Moscow-based curators of the Pushkin Museum had displayed, as they feared to leave the utterly “formalist” masterpieces of Picasso, Cezanne and Matisse in the Soviet capital, right next to the walls of the Kremlin, the Hermitage ultimately received the best and largest part of the masterpieces of the Museum”.