In Volgograd, SBER presented an exhibition of paintings lost during the Great Patriotic War

To remember means to revive! An interactive exhibition of paintings “Revived Collection” created by Sberbank’s Kandinsky neural network has opened at the Mashkov Museum. Artificial intelligence was able to restore paintings from the collection of the Stalingrad Art Gallery that were lost during the Great Patriotic War.

In augmented reality, residents and guests of Volgograd can see images of paintings by Arkhipov, Makovsky, Repin, Surikov, Yuon and others. The neural network was able to restore lost paintings by famous Russian artists thanks to the catalog of the Stalingrad Gallery published in 1941.

– This catalog is in the Gorky Library, it is in the museum’s collections, but it represents only 9 low-quality, black and white images of the great masters of Russian art. And today, we will just be able to see those works that died in the fire of the Battle of Stalingrad, – said the director of the Volgograd Museum of Fine Arts. I.I. Mashkova Varvara Ozerina.

The Sber neural network analyzed the artists’ works, compared them with surviving photographs of the paintings, and then created images of the lost paintings, taking into account the author’s style, manner and technique. The founder of the Stalingrad Gallery, Alexander Ivliev, went to the front in 1941 and gave his life defending his homeland. Vsevolod Spengler quoted lines from a letter from his illustrious great-grandfather.

– I will remain alive and devote all of myself to depicting the Great Patriotic War – I will write a series of paintings. Now I sometimes make sketches, but most of all I look, look, look – I so want to get to work right away and draw, draw endlessly and tirelessly,” Vsevolod Spengler quoted.

Although Alexander Borisovich was not able to bring his ideas to life, the memory of him and his work continues in his descendants. Vsevolod is studying to be an artist and he donated one of his works from the entire large family of Alexander Borisovich Ivliev to the Mashkov Museum fund.

– Continuity of generations is the transmission of the “spirit”, soul and heart, of those comrades, those artists who conveyed their inner state of soul onto canvases, and today we seem to have touched this history– shared the First Deputy Governor of the Volgograd Region, Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Volgograd Region Alexander Dorzhdeev.

The interactive exhibition “Revived Collection” is open to visitors at the Mashkov Museum of Fine Arts from April 26 to June 23. You can also view the works in the 3D gallery on the project website. In addition to paintings, at the online exhibition you can see a recreated image of the Stalingrad Art Gallery, destroyed during the historical battle on the banks of the Volga.