Pavel Filonov is one of the most enigmatic artists of the 20th century. His contemporaries — Malevich, Kandinsky, Tatlin — are known worldwide, not only among art historians but even to those with a casual interest in art. So how is it that an artist of no lesser personal magnitude, who developed an absolutely unique and inimitable style in painting, remained almost unknown for decades? How did an artist who virtually "reassembled" art end up being overlooked?

At the height of the Crimean War, in the summer of 1854, a squadron of 6 French and British ships arrived in Petropavlovsk on Kamchatka, the eastern border of the country, cut off from the capital of the Russian Empire by three months, with a population of 1531 people and a very small garrison. On their sides are 212 guns and 2250 professional military and sailors. The entire population of Petropavlovsk decides to give them a decisive battle.