"Unequal marriage" almost destroyed the friendship
“She exchanged me for a rich manufacturer!” - sobbing, explaining the reason for parting with her beloved Sophia Rybnikova, friend of the young artist Vasily Pukirev, merchant Sergey Varentsov. And…

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Secrets of famous paintings
Works of art often become particularly popular if they are legends about them or if they unexpectedly turn out to be not what they seem at first glance. "Kultura.RF" reveals…

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Avant-garde and socialist realism
Avant-gardism, developed in the literature by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov, since the 1910s has also spread powerfully in Russian painting. Back in the 1910s avant-gardism in Russia was fond…

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How photography completely changed the visual arts
Both painting and photography are forms of visual art that are designed to create images and visual symbols. The difference in the method of manufacture and creates some features. Painting…

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portrait form is still

Russian avant-garde, Russian artist Kandinsky, Vasily Vasilyevich

Kandinsky became the creator of abstract art in its pure form, its theorist and creator. In his early works, which strongly influenced the French and German influence, and undoubtedly in the later ones, the artist asserts the possibility of self-expression, freed from reality, painting, born “from the artist”, “from the mental vibrations”; born not as a “dead word”, but as a “fertilizing abstract spirit that has found a form for revelation” and “spilling over into a symphony whose name is the music of the spheres”.
After the October Revolution, abstraction was for some time proclaimed official art, and Kandinsky held leading positions in virtually all institutes and colleges, research museums and centers, but his ideas were not in demand by the Soviet society. However, the rejection of art, where the “brush itself seeks paint,” began even before October. Continue reading

About art emigration from Russia to the West (1920-1950s)

The problem of including the artistic heritage of Russian emigration in the concept of the development of Russian art of the 20th century in our days does not cease to be relevant. The contribution of individual representatives is still insufficiently studied, since it is often complicated by the fragmentation of collections – the exhibits not only adorn the collections of European or US museums, but are also in private collections, from time to time becoming top positions of the world’s leading auction houses.
The artistic process after the Revolution of 1917 turned out to be broken in two – part remained in Russia, the other began to develop in emigration. It is impossible to say unequivocally that there were no similar mass exodus in the world history of art. There were a lot of examples when artists worked in a different national environment, and one of them is the formation of the international school of Paris. However, for artists from other countries, participation in it can only be considered a line in his personal biography. Continue reading

EKATERININSKY PERIOD

Russian art in the Catherine period finally goes beyond one portrait form. A multi-genre painting system emerges at the Academy, and a historical picture appears. One of the brightest representatives of the first wave of academic students was A.P. Losenko.
ARTIST LOSENKO ANTON PAVLOVICH
A.P. Losenko called the founder of historical painting. Russian historical painting has not reached such heights as the art of portraiture. This canvas refers to the early period of the artist’s work, but he already had a certain level of preparation (before joining the Academy, IP Losenko was a student of IP Argunov). The historical genre, above all, served as an excellent experience for constructing a composition, drawing and improving the technique of oil painting. Historical painting very well embodied the principles of classicism. Continue reading

BOY WITH A TUBE by Pablo Picasso
The most expensive painting in the world? In 2004, at an Sotheby’s auction, an unknown buyer acquired the work of Pablo Picasso “Boy with a Pipe” (Garson and la Pipe)…

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The mystery is revealed why Mona Lisa does not smile at everyone
Mona Lisa smiles? Smirks? Or just twisted her mouth? Maybe even contemptuously curled? Dr. Erika Siegel (Dr Erika Siegel) and colleagues from the University of California (University of California, San…

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