Ivan Shishkin ( 2)

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin was a Russian landscape painter closely associated with the Peredvizhniki movement. Shishkin was born in Yelabuga of Vyatka Governorate (today Republic of Tatarstan), and graduated from the Kazan gymnasium. Then he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture for 4 years, attended the Saint Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts from 1856 to 1860,which he graduated with the highest honours and a gold medal. He received the Imperial scholarship for his further studies in Europe. Five years later Shishkin became a member of the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg and was professor of painting from 1873 to 1898. At the same time, Shishkin headed the landscape painting class at the Highest Art School in St. Petersburg.

Morning in a Pine Forest

Rye Fields

For some time, Shishkin lived and worked in Switzerland and Germany on scholarship from the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts. On his return to Saint Petersburg, he became a member of the Circle of the Itinerants and of the Society of Russian Watercolorists. He also took part in exhibitions at the Academy of Arts, the All Russian Exhibition in Moscow (1882), the Nizhniy Novgorod (1896), and the World Fairs (Paris, 1867 and 1878, and Vienna, 1873). Shishkin's painting method was based on analytical studies of nature. He became famous for his forest landscapes, and was also an outstanding draftsman and a printmaker.

Ivan Shishkin owned a dacha in Vyra, south of St. Petersburg. There he painted some of his finest landscapes. His works are notable for poetic depiction of seasons in the woods, wild nature, animals and birds. He died in 1898, in St. Petersburg, Russia, while working on his new painting.

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Viktor Vasnetsov (1)

Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov (1848-1926) is the Russian painter, master of historical and mythological genres, representative of Russian modernist style.

Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov was a painter whose works reveal an important facet of Russia's art during the period of Russian Revival. The son of a country priest, he attended a seminary before beginning his artistic education at the Petersburg Academy (where he studied with I.N. Kramskoi) and later, at the Academy of Arts. Although initially (as a member of the "Wanderers", a progressive art movement) Vasnetsov created many genre scenes, his style changed as the tide of public support turned against such prosaic, "social" art. By 1880 he was busy painting historical and legendary scenes taken from Russia's colorful past, and it is in this role that he (overtly) embodies so much of what the Russian revival was all about. Although by now there are some who doubt the enduring quality of his work, during Vasnetsov's lifetime he enjoyed at least a moderate level of popularity and appreciation and fulfilled various commissions for both museums and churches.

Rosa Newmarch once wrote that Vasnetsov's work exhibits a "union" of iconographical values and modern technique; such an opinion is best upheld by examining his work in the Cathedral of St. Vladimir, which he completed at the end of the 19th century. His The Mother of God with the Infant Christ, for example, adapts the iconographic tradition to a more "realistic", lively approach.

In addition, Vasnetsov was probably the first painter (as opposed to an artisan) to create theater backdrops; he began working in this capacity during the 1880s and 1890s. These efforts were also an expression of the Russian Revival, for out of his work and that of his followers sprang the idea of "realistic theatrical decor", which contributed much to the development of the Russian theater and ultimately was quite influential in Western Europe. Vasnetsov even dabbled in architecture; both a small church in Abramtsevo and the facade of the Tretyakov Gallery (in Moscow) were based on his drawings.

Despite the multi-faceted nature of his work, Vasnetsov is best known for his work in historical and legendary painting. As Newmarch states, "the dominant note of Vasnetsov's art is his intense and inviolate nationality"; indeed, during such a period of nationalist revival it would be difficult to ignore, and unjust to denounce an artist so talented and committed to his work. A scrupulous researcher (perhaps influenced by his brother, a painter and medieval archeologist Appolinariy Vasnetsov), Viktor Vasnetsov worked hard to add a certain poetry and carefully designed atmosphere to historical accuracy. Even the landscape backgrounds of Vasnetsov's historical paintings were influential on their own, and created a profound impact on the development of Russian landscape painting. Ultimately this influence, and that of all his work, may have been the result of his skillful union of "mysticism and realism" which so characteristically reflected the epic quality of Russia's early history.

The main advantage of decorative works of Vasnetsov is their colourful effect, affecting in only Russian combinations and shades of juicy, full and quiet colours.

Viktor Vasnetsov (2)

Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov (May 15, 1848 —July 23, 1926) was a Russian artist who specialized in mythological and historical subjects. He is considered the co-founder of Russian folklorist and romantic modernist painting and a key figure in the revivalist movement.
Viktor Vasnetsov was born in a remote village Lopyal of Vyatka in 1848, the second of the six children. From the age of ten, Viktor studied in a seminary in Vyatka, each summer moving with his family to a rich merchant village of Ryabovo. During his seminary years, he worked for a local icon shopkeeper. Having graduated from the seminary, Viktor decided to move to Saint Petersburg to study art. He auctioned his paintings of Woman Harvester and Milk-maid (both 1867) in order to raise money required for the trip to the Russian capital. In August 1867 Viktor entered the Imperial Academy of Arts.
In the early 1870s he executed a lot of engravings depicting contemporary life. Two of them (Provincial Bookseller from 1870 and A Boy with a Bottle of Vodka from 1872) won him a bronze medal at the World Fair in London (1874).
At that period he also started producing genre paintings in oil. Such pieces as Peasant Singers (1873) and Moving House (1876) were warmly welcomed by democratic circles of Russian society.



"Moving House"

Vasnetsov concentrated on illustrating Russian fairy tales and bylinas, executing some of his best known pieces: Knight at the Crossroads (1878), Prince Igor's Battlefield (1878), Three tsarevnas of the Underground Kingdom (1879–1881), The Magic Carpet (1880), and Alionushka (1881).
In 1912, he was given a noble title by Czar Nicholas II. In 1914, he designed a revenue stamp intended for voluntary collection for victims of World War I.

"Knight at the Crossroads"




"Alionushka"
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Film

Art Nouveau - 1890-1914

Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art". The style was influenced strongly by Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, when Mucha produced a lithographed poster, which appeared on 1 January 1895 in the streets of Paris as an advertisement for the play "Gismonda"  by Victorien Sardou, featuring Sarah Bernhardt. It popularised the new artistic style and its creator to the citizens of Paris. Initially named Style Mucha, (Mucha Style), his style soon became known as Art Nouveau.

   This is a Mucha's poster that marked the beginning of the given style:

The style was richly ornamental and asymmetrical, characterized by organic and dynamic forms, curving design, and whiplash lines. Its exponents chose themes fraught with symbolism, frequently of an erotic nature. They imbued their designs with dreamlike and exotic forms.

The outstanding representatives of Art Nouveau include British graphic artists such as Aubrey Beardsley, Charles Ricketts, Walter Crane; the Scottish architect Charles R. Mackintosh, as well as Australian painter Gustav Klimt. 

Nabis - 1890s.

Les Nabis (pronounced nah-BEE) were a group of Post-Impressionist avant-garde artists who set the pace for fine arts and graphic arts in France in the 1890s. Initially a group of friends interested in contemporary art and literature, most of them studied at the private art school of Rodolphe Julian in Paris in the late 1880s. In 1890, they began to successfully participate in public exhibitions, while most of their artistic output remained in private hands or in the possession of the artists themselves.

Georges Lacombe, Marine bleue, Effet de vagues, 1893

The Nabis rejected the Renaissance ideal of easel painting as a window onto a fictional world. Disavowing illusions of depth, they abandoned both linear perspective and modeling. Like many of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, they were inspired by the broad planes of unmediated color, thick outlines, and bold patterns that characterize Japanese prints. Unlike prints, however, Nabi paintings often feature textured surfaces created by varied brushstrokes. Although they continued to use traditional supports like canvas and panel, they also branched out to paint on a range of flat surfaces, including velvet, cardboard, and screens. The Nabis maintained an egalitarian attitude toward materials and collaborated with patrons, designers, publishers, and dealers on decorative projects ranging from set designs to wallpaper, textiles, ceramics, and stained glass.

Artists: Pierre Bonnard; Maurice Denis; Maxime Pierre Dethomas; Paul Ranson; Johannes Sixtus Gerhardus Verkade. 

Fauvism - 20c.

Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for "the wild beasts"), a loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only a couple of years, 1904–1908, and had three exhibitions.

 

Henri Matisse. Woman with a Hat, 1905. 

 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The paintings of the Fauves were characterized by seemingly wild brush work and strident colors, while their subject matter had a high degree of simplification and abstraction. Fauvism can be classified as an extreme development of Van Gogh's Post-Impressionism fused with the pointillism of Seurat and other Neo-Impressionist painters, in particular Paul Signac. Fauvism can also be seen as a mode of Expressionism. 

Representatives: Henri Matisse, André Derain, Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, Kees van Dongen, Alice Bailly. 

Idealism - 20c.

Idealism, in the context of art, refers to a stylistic departure from the realistic appearance of things in order to portray more accurately the ideal essence of things. In other words, the idealist artist is someone who ignores the flawed forms of things found in nature, and this permits him or her to grasp and portray the idea of things without flaws. In this way, the idealist artists seek to re-create the perfect ideational forms of things that nature has only imperfectly rendered. This approach to art is closely affiliated with Plato's philosophy, which maintains that tangible objects, as they appear in the world, are imperfect copies of the ideal forms of objects as they exist in the sphere of ideas. 

Of course, Plato ultimately came to denounce artists because their works were imitations of the forms found in nature, which were themselves only imitations of the ideal forms of things as they take shape in the mind. Hence, for Plato, art was the pale imitation of another pale imitation. But the tradition of idealist art attempts to short-circuit this chain of pale imitations. For the idealist artist, the goal is to imitate the ideal form of a subject directly, completely bypassing its natural form.

 

 Julius Evola 'Tendencies of Sensory Idealism' (1916-1918)