Osip Mandelstam. Word and Destiny

Ósip Mandelstam (Warsaw, Russian Empire, 1891-Vladivostok, USSR, 1937) is, along with Vladimir Mayakovsky, the great Russian poet of the twentieth century. He was denounced and arrested in 1934 for writing a poem against Stalin. A second arrest in 1938 resulted in deportation to the Kolyma concentration camp (gulag) in Siberia. He died on December 27, 1938. His poetry was preserved from destruction by his wife Nadiezhda.  In 1956, during the thaw of Khrushchev's time, he was exonerated of his posthumous conviction, although the complete rehabilitation of the poet would not come until 1987. Today Mandelstam is regarded as an undisputed classic of Russian literature of all time.

In Spain a part of his work has been published: Armonía en prosa y verso (Acantilado, 2011), Poesía (Vaso Roto, 2010), La cuarto prosa (Maldoror, 2007), El sello egipcio (Maldoror, 2006), Coloquio sobre Dante (Acantilado, 2004), Crestomatía (Huerga y Fierro, 2004), Gozo y misterio de la poesía (El Cobre, 2003), Sobre la naturaleza de la palabra y otros ensayos (Ardora,  2003), Cuadernos de Voronezh (Igitur, 1999), Tristia y otros poemas (Igitur, 1998), etc.

The exhibition is conceived as a complete account in images of the life and work of Ossip Mandelstam, at the same time as a broad sample of the culture and society of the time in which he lived, from the prolegomena of the Russian Revolution to the time of Stalinism. It contains photographs, manuscripts, posters, books, magazines, drawings, paintings, press clippings and documents (both originals and reproductions, either facsimile or inserted in panels) from the aforementioned Archive, both relating to Mandelstam himself and to contemporary friends and artists, who form an impressive fresco of the Russia of his time.