The article is devoted to the typology and specifics of the image of the city in modern Moscow painting. It is noted that the main discoveries in the modern landscape are connected not with the natural landscape, but with the city landscape and its various modifications, based on the perception of the city as a polyphonic whole. Changes in the interpretation of urban species are structured from the point of view of the change of artistic generations: senior (artists who started their creative career at the turn of the 1970s-1980s) and younger — generation of modern thirty-year-olds. In the article on the example of works of six authors revealed features of interpretations of the city theme, characteristic for two artistic generations: first, the city view as a reflection of historical memory, secondly, the study of the social organism of the city. The urban landscape of the turn of the XX-XXI centuries tells the viewer not so much about the urban form, but about the existential well-being of the individual and society as a whole. According to the differences in approaches, the figurative-plastic language of modern painters differs. The perspective drawn in the article and considered works of Moscow painters allow you to see the change of artistic generations as a change of meanings, figurative accents and methods of their arrangement, traced in the interpretation and transformation of the image of the city.