MOSCOW.- The Moscow Museum of Modern Art together with the Moscow Naïve Art Museum present the second triennial festival of international naïve and outsider art – “Festnaïve-2007”. The vast festival exposition includes works lent from 16 art museums, 14 research institutes, as well as from private collections from countries as diverse as Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Serbia and Ukraine, thus making the show a truly international event. In total 154 artists are represented in more than 400 pieces.

The main agenda of the festival lies in the necessity to introduce a general viewer to the universe of naïve and outsider art and to make its expressive strength and deeply humane character be felt and acknowledged. The displayed works are made by artists with different backgrounds and creative upbringing. Presented artworks reflect individual moral and aesthetic ideals of these unconventional people. It may be said that the general leitmotif of the show is the ever-recurring idea of the man-nature relationship, its’ acuteness in the creative mindset of a non-professional or mentally unstable creative individual. In tackling this theme all artists participating in the show evoke a sort of emotional capability rarely seen in “trained” or professional contemporary art. In many ways the works displayed reveal a close affinity with the decorative peculiarity of rural and urban folk culture and an intrinsic fascination with its forms and thematic repertoire.

A particularly interesting part of the exposition is devoted to outsider art. Many works of this kind were lent by the Outsider Art Museum (Moscow) and the “Inye” (“The Different”) Collection (Yaroslavl). Outsider art, created by individuals with no intention of gaining institutional or public recognition, is a phenomenon that truly deserves a thorough study. For the “outsider” the conventional reality is less important then images created inside his or her inner world. Many outsiders have psychiatric or medium experience, others are considered eccentric. Creative individuals of this kind are concerned with creating their own mental projections and personal myths and are less interested in establishing a dialogue or any other form of communication with the viewer. The present exhibition thus strives to let the public experience this otherwise hard-to-reach material.

In the context of the festival the creative achievements of a number of participating artists shall be celebrated with a specially established award entitled “The Crystal Flower”. The exhibition is accompanied by a two-day scholarly conference devoted to the problems of naïve and outsider art with a number of art historians and other experts from Belarus, Estonia, Israel, Russia and Ukraine participating. The conference is entitled “Naïve and Outsider Art in the XXI Century: History, Practice and Perspectives”.