Luring Russians to Avant-Garde Art

Zelfira Tregulova, the director of the Tretyakov gallery, vividly recalls the first time she saw Kazimir Malevich’s iconic 1915 painting “Black Square.” “It was in 1974, I remember the shock.” As an art history student at Moscow State University, she first encountered the painting in the Tretyakov Gallery, albeit not hanging in the airy exhibition…