St. Petersburg 4

Ada was feeling overtouristed and worn out today, so she slept in.   Vera and I went to the Russian Art Museum. Most interesting were the late 19th century and early 20th century.  Malevich, Kandinsky, etc.   A highlight for me was the work of Pavel Filonov, whose large , visionary and complex paintings I didn't know.   A detail from one:

In the 20's, suddenly we are in the land of Stalinist aesthetics, and we get lots of worker heroes.   The caption is very elliptical:

Also the icons, some dating from the 12th century, were fascinating to see.


In the afternoon, I took a very long walk for 4 hours.   Started in a very long escalator with very cool lights:

Then I saw a mosque:

and a flying saucer:

(actually a metro station)

And then I found my favorite building in St. Petersburg:

It is some kind of school, I think.  It is fairly old, but some architect clearly loved Mondrian.  All schools should look like this.

A close up:

Every other block in St. Petersburg contains some magnificent palace or edifice, or a new view of a block of interesting buildings.  It all feels very lived in though; some buildings are elegantly restored, others in a pleasing state of decrepitude.   The different colors of the buildings are nice, too.   One last example:

Onwards to Stockholm tomorrow..