The exhibition ‘The Fruit of the Land’

The exhibition ‘The Fruit of the Land’ includes about 40 works by more than 30 Belarusian artists from the 18th to the late 20th century from the museum’s collections. It is dedicated to the fruits as the results of human labor, as divine gifts and symbols of wisdom, as love and joy.

These are not only still lifes, but also landscapes, and even portraits. The exhibition contains several sections: ‘Flowers and Fruits’, ‘The Garden of Eden’, ‘Dialogue’, ‘Life on the Table’ and ‘In the Style of Cezanne’.

The works of peaceful creative labor displayed at the exhibition invite us to ‘stop and look around’, to peer into the fruit of the land. They return to us the belief that beauty and harmony lie at the heart of the universe. No wonder an unknown icon painter of the 18th century put an apple into the hands of the Infant Christ, sitting in the arms of the Mother of God. This apple is the fruit of the Garden of Eden from the tree of good and evil. Jesus Christ is called the New Adam in the Christian tradition, since sin and death entered human nature through Adam. Jesus (the God-man) saved the human race from original sin. The theme of the Garden of Eden is continued at the exhibition by artists depicting the flowering of gardens – the time when the land turns into the scented Garden of Eden for several days.

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