- Russian visual arts
Early Russian painting focused on
icon painting and vibrantfresco 's inherited by Russians fromByzantium . As Moscow rose to power,Theophanes the Greek andAndrei Rublev are vital names associated with the beginning of a distinctly Russian art. TheRussian Academy of Arts was created in 1757, aimed to give Russian artists an international role and status. Notable portrait painters from the Academy includeIvan Argunov ,Fyodor Rokotov ,Dmitry Levitzky andVladimir Borovikovsky . Realism flourished in the 19th century and the realists captured Russian identity. Russian landscapes of wide rivers, forests, and birch clearings, as well as vigorous genre scenes and robust portraits of their contemporaries asserted a sense of identity. Other artists focused onsocial criticism , showing the conditions of the poor and caricaturing authority whilecritical realism flourished under the reign of Alexander II.After the abolition of serfdom in 1861 some artists made the circle of human suffering their focus. Artists sometimes created wide canvasses to depict dramatic moments in Russian history. The
Peredvizhniki (wanderers) group of artists broke with Russian Academy and initiated a school of art liberated from Academic restrictions. Their paintings had deep social and political meaning. Leading realists includeIvan Shishkin ,Arkhip Kuindzhi ,Ivan Kramskoi ,Vasily Polenov ,Isaac Levitan ,Vasily Surikov ,Viktor Vasnetsov , andIlya Repin . By the 1830s the Academy was sending painters overseas to learn. The most gifted of these were Aleksander Ivanov andKarl Briullov , both of whom were noted for the Romantic historical canvasses. Uniquely Russian styles of painting emerged by the late 19th century that was intimately engaged with the daily life of Russian society.The
Russian avant-garde is an umbrella term used to define the large, influential wave ofmodernist art that flourished in Russia from approximately 1890 to 1930. The term covers many separate, but inextricably related, art movements that occurred at the time; namelyneo-primitivism ,suprematism , constructivism,rayonism and futurism. Notable artists from this era includeEl Lissitzky ,Kazimir Malevich ,Wassily Kandinsky ,Vladimir Tatlin ,Alexander Rodchenko , andMarc Chagall amongst others. The Russian avant-garde reached its creative and popular height in the period between theRussian Revolution of 1917 and 1932, at which point the ideas of theavant-garde clashed with the newly emerged conservative Stalinist direction ofsocialist realism .
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