No one remembers the origin of this phrase; when making a search of the same name on the Internet there happens to be mainly references to our exhibition, but, nevertheless, all Russian speaking people know very well that folk wisdom is always right. If from generation to generation our country is considered as being the homeland of elephants, then, so it must be.

In principle one could challenge this statement, declaring that Russia is the homeland of whales. Some people, posing as experts, say exactly that, but we know (don’t we) that in answer to this and to any other such expression, one can, with success, advise them to buy an elephant. Moreover, our gallery provides such a chance for almost a whole month, and it would be a sin not to use it. However, the hero of one of the exhibited pictures (of Tatyanin Y.) to the question, who will win, the whale or the elephant, quite rightly answers: “Alcohol, sonny!”

If you scrape a Russian artist – you will discover an elephant: this is more or less what was revealed in the process of preparing for the given project. We do not assert that all of them avoided the depiction of an elephant in their art, but many great authors have already created their own elephants in their time, which fully corroborates the truth of the saying. Some are shown in the exhibition: the elephants of Vladimir Nemuhin, Andrey Vasnetsov or Vladimir Yankilevsky have existed almost as many years as on average live their natural counterparts. But, we assert that they will outlive any of today’s elephants. Elephants of the average generation, created by the brushes and palette knives of Batynkov, Golubev, Savko, Tatyanin and others, vividly demonstrate just how wide their stylistic range and sphere of activity is. Finally, the above mentioned herds are being joined by a generation of young, fresh elephants, which, however, no one will call elephant calves.

Undeniably, the time of the mammoths and mastodons has passed, which may be perceived as the decline of a certain epoch. New generations of elephants could not but come as replacements, born on the boundless expanses of our immense homeland. Because, where else, ultimately, could they have been born, if not in Russia? The exhibition tries to give the answer to that very question.