?The Russian avant-garde is the one Russian artistic system to enter the world canon on equal terms, and its largest collection is here. MoMA and the Pompidou show Malevich and Tatlin torn from their setting; here they hang beside what they rebelled against, which changes the reading.
Malevich’s Black Square, Petrov-Vodkin’s Bathing of a Red Horse, work by Kandinsky, Chagall, Goncharova and Larionov, the model of Tatlin’s Tower. Next door: the Muzeon park of dismantled Soviet monuments.
Minimum route — 2–3 hours for the essentials
Start with the Black Square and the avant-garde hall — Kandinsky, Goncharova, Larionov, Tatlin’s Tower. Then Bathing of a Red Horse. Leave time for the temporary show: the gallery’s biggest projects are here.
Reference
About the museum
The Tretyakov Gallery building on Krymsky Val: the permanent display Art of the 20th Century and the gallery’s main temporary shows. Officially named the New Tretyakov since 2018.
The building
Built 1979–1983 by Y. Sheverdyaev and N. Sukoyan, shared with the Central House of Artists.
Good to know
A separate ticket from Lavrushinsky Lane.
What to read
Camilla Gray, “The Russian Experiment in Art 1863–1922” — the book that put the Russian avant-garde into the general history of art.
Getting in
Addresschecked 15 August 2026, the museum website
Krymsky Val 10
How to get there
Metro Oktyabrskaya or Park Kultury
Opening timeschecked 16 August 2026, the museum website
open now until 21:00
Mon
closed
Tue–Sun today
10:00–21:00
last admission 1 h before closing
Entry and box office close an hour early. Closed Mondays.
Ticketschecked 15 August 2026, the museum website
Adults 700 ₽. Students and pensioners of Russia and the EAEU 400 ₽. Children 7–17 350 ₽. Under 7 and some categories free.
from 700 ₽ ≈ £6 Converted at the Bank of Russia rate for 18 August 2026.
tickets online · timed entry
When to go
The building is huge and absorbs crowds. It gets tight only at loud exhibitions, in their first and last two weeks.
The avant-garde reaches children more easily than the classics: strong colour, plain shapes. From 6; there are children’s routes and workshops.
Access for visitors with limited mobility
The museum — step-free. A modern building: ramps, lifts, wide doorways, accessible toilets. Wheelchairs are lent. Getting there — step-free. Oktyabrskaya and Park Kultury have no lifts. There is convenient parking at the door and low-floor buses along Krymsky Val. Moscow metro stations almost never have lifts to the platform, except on the Big Circle line and the MCC. A wheelchair user is better served by the surface buses, which are low-floor across the centre.
Work by the sculptor who carved quebracho and algarrobo: in his hands wood holds shapes impossible in marble.
If this moved you
In the same city
If the avant-garde on Krymsky Val looked to you like a blueprint of the future, on Vozdvizhenka that future was drawn in earnest — and almost none of it was built.
