The State Tretyakov Gallery (Russian: Государственная Третьяковская Галерея, romanized: Gosudarstvennaya Tretyakovskaya Galereya; abbreviated ГТГ, GTG) is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, which is considered the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world.
The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Muscovite merchant Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov acquired works by Russian artists of his day with the aim of creating a collection, which might later grow into a museum of national art. In 1892, Tretyakov presented his already famous collection of approximately 2,000 works (1,362 paintings, 526 drawings, and 9 sculptures) to the Russian nation. The museum attracted 894,374 visitors in 2020 (down 68 percent from 2019, due to the COVID-19 pandemic). It was 13th on the list of most-visited art museums in the world in 2020.
The façade of the gallery building was designed by the painter Viktor Vasnetsov in a peculiar Russian fairy-tale style. It was built in 1902–04 to the south from the Moscow Kremlin. During the 20th century, the gallery expanded to several neighboring buildings, including the 17th-century church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi. The collection contains more than 130,000 exhibits, ranging from the Theotokos of Vladimir to the monumental Composition VII by Wassily Kandinsky and the Black Square by Kazimir Malevich. In 1977 the Gallery kept a significant part of the George Costakis collection.
In May 2012, the Tretyakov Art Gallery played host to the prestigious FIDE World Chess Championship between Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand as the organizers felt the event would promote both chess and art at the same time. In May 2023, the Tretyakov Gallery refused to hand over one of its most famous icons, Andrei Rublev's Trinity, to the Russian Orthodox Church. In June 2023 the icon was transferred to Moscow's main cathedral despite the museum's protests on the personal order of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Administratively, the State Tretyakov Gallery organisation also includes a gallery of contemporary art in another part of central Moscow, and a number of other satellite galleries, including one in Kaliningrad, in the extreme west of Russia, and one in Vladivostok, in the far east.
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