Russian painting from the 10th to the 18th century: from Byzantine to Western influence
Under the influence of Byzantium, which affected art as well as religion, architecture and literature, Russian painting was dominated by religious themes until the 18th century. Following strict rules, these works were often the work of Greek painters invited to work in the country, who anchored and perpetuated Byzantine culture. It was with Peter the Great and his famous European openness that art emancipated itself from religion and renewed its subjects. Setting up the capital in St. Petersburg, he cut it off from the traditional cultural influences of Moscow to initiate a new pictorial direction. To this end, he brought in foreign painters to train Russian artists. By opening up to German, French and Italian painting, Russian creativity took on a new lease of life. A dichotomy was created between Moscow, which became the sanctuary of religious art, and St. Petersburg, where a new school of painting was born.
The 19th century, an emancipating century for Russian painting
From the 19th century onwards, Russian painting began to emancipate itself from previous models and find its own way. Against the trend of neoclassicism, which gave pride of place to the ancient art of Greece and Rome, one figure stood out for the inventiveness of his creations: Alexei Venetsianov (1780-1847). This painter drew his inspiration from rural life, expressing its charm and serenity through his bucolic depictions of beautiful genre scenes. His painting Summer, depicting a peasant woman breast-feeding her child, is emblematic of his key theme: the parallel between working the land and motherhood. The two artists who dominated the second quarter of the 19th century were Karl Bryullov (1799-1852) and Alexander Ivanov (1806-1858). The latter helped shape a distinctly Russian style, independent of the great foreign models. " The Last Day of Pompeii is the first day of Russian art", exclaimed one critic of Bryullov's painting! The artist's reputation spread throughout the West.
The "ambulant": the birth of social painting
With the fall of the Russian Empire and the advent of the USSR, classical painting was seen as representative of the decrepitude of the old regime, and like it, doomed to collapse. New canons were designated, and it was the realist vein, perfectly in tune with Soviet ideals, that took over. Nineteenth-century realist painters such as Vassili Perov (1834-1882) were revived. This precursor exploited social themes such as poverty, harsh working conditions and alcoholism. Realistic painting gradually led to social painting, embodied in the "Ambulants" movement, of which Perov was a leading figure. They were so named because they criss-crossed Russia to awaken the peasant world to art. The leading artist of this movement was Ilya Repine (1844-1930), whose most remarkable works are The Volga Breeders (1870-1873), The Zaporogues Cossacks writing a letter to the Sultan of Turkey (1880-1891) and Ivan the Terrible kills his son (1885). With their raw realism and the impression of life they convey, they make a great impression on Russia at the time. Many of his paintings can be admired at the Tretyakov Gallery.
Naive art
Northern Russia has a rich tradition of naive art. Many of its self-taught painters have contributed their vision and interpretation of the world without following academic rules. Figurative, these paintings most often depict genre scenes. Peasant life is one of the themes most developed by the "naïve painters", who themselves came from this world. Among the most renowned artists of this trend is Efim Chestnyakov (1874-1961), whose paintings are populated by round-featured characters dressed in local fashion. They provide a touching glimpse of popular life in the countryside in the first part of the 20th century. There's also Vladimir Zaznobin (1900-1981), a carpenter turned woodcarver, whose anthropomorphic and functional statues (beehives, mills, etc.) are instantly recognizable.
From art with a social aim to art for art
From 1885 to 1925, Russia experienced a veritable artistic effervescence and shone on the international cultural scene. The center of this ferment was the Abramtsevo estate (which can still be visited today) of industrialist Savva Mamontov, where the entire milieu of painting, architecture and sculpture came together. It was here that the Symbolist movement developed, influencing the whole world by creating a radical break with realism. National folklore is celebrated as a source of inspiration.
It was a painter who frequented Abramtsevo, by the name of Mikhail Vroubel (1856-1910), who first broke with the tradition of social painting established by the Ambulants, giving artistic creation a whole new scope. His obsession with the Devil gave rise to a body of work with an absolutely remarkable fantastic tone (see The Seated Devil, 1890, and The Downcast Devil, 1902, both on view at the Tretyakov Gallery). Against the grain of the social art movement, he was the precursor of "art for art's sake".
In 1898, a group of artists calling themselves "art for art's sake" was formed, the Russian version of the German Jugendstil or French Art Nouveau. They sought to decompartmentalize the different types of art: theater, painting and literature. The magazine they created, Le Monde de l'art(Mir iskousstva), which gave its name to this association of artists, was to have a great impact on future generations. Among its most eminent members were the brilliant Boris Koustodiev, Constantin Korovine, Isaac Levitan, Ivan Bilibine, Anna Petrovna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Léon Bakst, Nathalie Goncharoff
Alexandre Iacovleff, Élisabeth Krouglikoff and many others.
The great era of the Russian avant-garde
This was the birth of the Russian avant-garde, a key moment in Russian creativity. Its precursor was Vassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), who oriented his painting towards the abstract, giving more importance to the spirit than to matter. His colorful, geometric canvases met with resounding success, particularly in Europe, where he settled. Today, several of these can be admired at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Alongside them are works by Kazimir Malevich, the second great figure of the avant-garde. His famous Carré noir sur fond blanc (1915), exhibited at the Tretyakov Gallery, prefigured a real break in the history of art, cutting creation off from the representation of reality to explore completely unknown dimensions in lines and materials - what Malevich himself would call "Suprematism".
As for painter and sculptor Vladimir Tatline (1885-1953), he was the precursor of Constructivism. Marc Chagall (1887-1985), who spent most of his life abroad, lulled his canvases into dreamlike tones. Finally, Kouzma Petrov-Vodkine (1878-1939) was inspired by icon painting. As prescribed by the rules of icon painting, he used bright reds and gold, symbolic of divinity, giving his figures the same luminosity as iconic saints.
From socialist realism to underground art
With the revolution, two trends emerged: artists who agreed to apply socialist realism as defined in 1932, and those who chose exile. Socialist canons demanded that the life of peasants and workers be depicted in the most favorable light, to show the enthusiasm brought about by the revolution. Art was one of the state's most important means of propaganda, and it did not hesitate to subsidize it in order to give a visual dimension to its ideology. The magnificent Moscow metro, built in the 1930s, is symbolic of this trend: it was intended to show the world that socialism could do just as well as capitalism, and many artists were called in to decorate it.
Artists who did not respect the canons were mostly banned from exhibiting. But until 1945, there was no real pictorial dissidence or underground scene. The thaw initiated by Khrushchev in 1953 ushered in a new period. The many artists who opposed the dogmas of socialist realism proposed innovative, even revolutionary painting. This marked the beginning of the era of apartment exhibitions, where these forbidden paintings were shown. At the end of the 1960s, there was a split between official and underground art, marking the birth of oppositional painting, of which Ilya Kabakov (b. 1933), Vitaly Komar (b. 1943) and Alexander Melamid (b. 1945) are the most famous representatives. They hijacked the clichés of socialist realism to challenge a way of life. 1974 was a landmark year: the artists decided to organize public exhibitions, one of which was crushed by a bulldozer.
Photography, at the heart of Russian history
Photography, a highly developed genre in Russia throughout the 20th century, is an excellent way of understanding the country's history. To discover the richness and variety of this medium, don't miss the Moscow House of Photography. Created in 1996, this museum brings together masterpieces of Russian photographic art, notably by Alexander Grinberg (1885-1979) and Max Penson (1893-1959) among the Pictorialists, and Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1856) and Dmitri Baltermants (1912-1990) among the Realists. But it also actively supported emerging photographers, organizing festivals, competitions and temporary exhibitions.
With the Soviet revolution, social photography and documentary reportage came to the fore, reaching their peak in the 1920s, with key artists such as Rodchenko. This tradition has endured well beyond the Soviet era, and has taken on more critical contemporary overtones among the latest generations, who seek to capture the sometimes brutal changes the country has undergone. To name but a few, Alexander Abasa (1934-2005), Yuri Kozyrev (1963), Igor Mukhin (1969) and Georgy Pervov (1974) are representative figures of the style and its evolution.
A contemporary art in development
Since the 1980s, Russian art, no longer needing to correspond to or oppose a model, has been looking for its own way. As a result, there was a lull in creation until the 2000s, which marked the beginning of a renewal in local creation. Today, the art scene is concentrated in Moscow, although other cities, such as St. Petersburg, also have their say. The country boasts a number of contemporary art centers, and since 2000 Moscow has been home to a biennial event that attracts a growing international audience. The impressive Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 2008 by two philanthropists, has in just a few years become a benchmark institution for contemporary art, bringing Moscow up to the same level as other globalized capitals in this respect.
Such infrastructures, along with the efforts of local curators and gallery owners (such as Galerie Tatintsian), are an important support for emerging Russian artists, enabling them to gain greater visibility both within the country and internationally. Backed by this institutional support, these artists are increasingly daring to speak out against the authorities, despite censorship that remains very real. Indeed, calls to order are frequent, as in 2014 when an exhibition by Vasily Slonov (1969), critical of the Sochi Olympics, led to the dismissal of the director of PERMM, one of the country's most important contemporary art museums, who had programmed it.
Street art, an increasingly dynamic scene
Street art arrived in Russia in the late 1990s, initially in Moscow and St. Petersburg, before spreading throughout the country. Far from being confined to small, stealthy graffiti, street art has become a veritable culture, with its great masters, its unmissable locations, its references and its rituals. This scene is accompanied by hip-hop and breakdance concerts, a whole atmosphere that contributes to the community spirit and solidarity of the young people involved. Initially perceived as a delinquent practice, street art is gradually becoming commonplace and is now seen in a more positive light. Municipalities have realized that street art can act as a vehicle for social cohesion, helping to revitalize and beautify run-down or marginalized neighborhoods.
Among the "fathers" of the genre is Zmogk (1979), one of the first artists to use Moscow's streets as a canvas. Electric robots, futuristic machines and transformers are recurring themes in his colorful, often monumental works, which can be seen all over the world today. New life, one of his most recent frescoes, created for the Urban Morphogenesis festival in Odinstovo, is highly abstract and consists mainly of flat tints of color; it bears witness to the more graphic turn his work has recently taken. Painted on the side of a gigantic tower, it adds a touch of lightness to the setting.
If you don't have the time to go in search of these murals one by one, St. Petersburg's Street Art Museum concentrates works by Russian and international artists who can't be ignored. This former brick factory, spread over eleven hectares, is an ideal setting. Not only is it a meeting place for street art enthusiasts, it also houses a skate park and regularly organizes workshops, meetings and DJ sets. A place of freedom and encounter for local youth!
