Perm Wooden Gods

The Orthodox church discouraged and at times forbade three-dimensional religious sculpture, treating it as too close to idolatry, and yet the villages of the Kama basin produced carved wooden saints in quantity from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century - Christ seated in captivity with his head in his hand, Nicholas, crucifixions, angels - carved by local men and painted. The faces are the striking part: many are broad and flat with the features of the Komi-Permyak and other Finno-Ugric peoples of the region, so the figures look like the people who made them, and the older tradition of carved wooden idols in these forests is generally taken to be behind the practice. Nikolai Serebrennikov collected them in the 1920s on expeditions through the villages, saving several hundred that would otherwise have been destroyed. They are displayed in the Perm gallery, whose long-planned move to a new building means the location should be checked before a visit.

What you actually see

• The seated Christ - the figure in captivity, head on hand, repeated across the collection.
• The local faces - saints carved with Finno-Ugric features by the villagers who made them.
• The forbidden form - sculpture produced despite church disapproval of it.
• The 1920s rescue - figures collected on village expeditions before they were lost.

When to go

All year. Two hours. Check which building the gallery is in before travelling.

Honest expectations

The gallery has been moving to a new home, so the collection's location and opening arrangements change; confirm before going. Labelling is Russian. Perm is a long way east and reached mainly by air or a long train.

Nearby

The Kama embankment is nearby; Khokhlovka open air museum is about 45 km north.