The exhibition "Most Beautiful Place I've Ever Been"

March 6 — May 17, 2026

Hall В, С

The first exhibition in the renovated building of the Victoria Gallery, dedicated to landscape in Russian and international art of the 20th-21st centuries.

About the exhibition

The Victoria Gallery presents «Most Beautiful Place I’ve Ever Been», an exhibition dedicated to landscape in Russian and international art of the 20th-21st centuries.

The project will occupy two floors of the Gallery and bring together painting, sculpture, and photography from private collections. Among the artists are world-class stars such as Takashi Murakami, Mario Testino, and Jutta Koether; classics of Russian art, including Valentina Kropivnitskaya and Erik Bulatov; and important Samara-based authors.

This is the first exhibition with which the Gallery opens its renovated building. By dedicating it to landscape, the Gallery—located on the embankment of the Volga River—reflects on its place on the city map and its role as a meeting point for the aesthetic and the intellectual. Samara, situated on the picturesque Volga banks, has its special relationship with landscape—a genre through which man tirelessly contemplates his place in space, in nature, and in human community.

In the works presented in the exhibition, landscape opens a field for broad experimentation with space, becomes a tool for conversation about colonialism, the Anthropocene, geopolitics, migration, and social inequality, and at the same time provides an occasion to address the phenomenon of natural beauty, which serves as a counterpoint to all human endeavors.

The works for the exhibition are provided by private collections, emphasizing the importance of the collector and patron figure in Russian culture.

Artists

AES+F, Tauba Auerbach, Erik Bulatov, Alexander Vinogradov and Vladimir Dubosarsky, Alexander Gronsky, Andreas Gursky, Peter Doig, Adip Dutta, Daria Emelyanova, Dunya Zakharova, Alexey Zhuravlev, Jutta Koether, Valentina Kropivnitskaya, Oleg Kulik, Evgeny Muzalevsky, Takashi Murakami, Mario Testino, Wolfgang Tillmans, Gennady Filatov, Hako Hankson.

Curator

Sergey Balandin

The exhibition is organized with the participation of Anton Belov, Zoya Galeeva, Anton Kozlov, Alina Pinsky, Vladimir and Ekaterina Semenikhin, Andrey and Ekaterina Terebenin, Andrey Cheglakov Foundation, AZ Museum, V-A-C Foundation, Victoria Gallery, and others.