Tuesday, 24 September 2013

Ilya Repin



Ilya Yefimovich Repin (5 August 1844 – 29 September 1930) was a leading Russian painter and sculptor of the Peredvizhniki artistic school. An important part of his work is dedicated to his native country, Ukraine. His realistic works often expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order. Beginning in the late 1920s, detailed works on him were published in the Soviet Union, where a Repin cult developed about a decade later. He was held up as a model "progressive" and "realist" to be imitated by "Socialist Realist" artists in the USSR.




Ilya Repin’s Techniques:
From 1873 to 1876, Repin was permitted to travel through Italy and France. While in France, Repin became enamored with the Impressionist movement and while Repin’s style remained tighter and more conservative, the Impressionist use of light and color had a profound effect upon him.
Repin was most celebrated for his portraits. His fame and connections allowed him to paint some of the most famous Russians of the time including: writer Leo Tolstoy, scientist Dmitri Mendeleev, philanthropist Pavel Tretyakov, Ukrainian poet Taras Shevechenko, and even Tsar Nicholas II.

Ilya Repin’s best works:



Religious Procession in Kursk Province, 1880–83





Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire, 1880–91



“Pushkin's Farewell to the sea”,  1877

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2 comments:

  1. It is interesting that Repin’s works are based on historical and contemporary subjects. In 1881, Repin painted a series of pictures dealing with the theme of the Russian revolutionary movement: Refusal to Confess, Arrest of a Propagandist, The Meeting, and They Did Not Expect Him. The last is considered his masterpiece on the subject, mixing contrasting psychological moods and Russian and Ukrainian national motifs. His large-scale Religious Procession in the Province of Kursk is sometimes considered an archetype of the "Russian national style," as it displays various social classes and the tensions among them, set within the context of a traditional religious practice and united by a slow but relentless forward movement.
    One of Repin's most complex paintings, Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire, occupied him for more than a decade. He conceived this painting as a study in laughter, but also believed that it involved the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
    During his maturity, Repin painted many of his most celebrated compatriots, including the novelist Leo Tolstoy, the court photographer Rafail Levitsky, the scientist Dmitri Mendeleev, the imperial official Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the composer Modest Mussorgsky, the cellist Aleksandr Verzhbilovich, the philanthropist Pavel Tretyakov, and the Ukrainian poet and painter, Taras Shevchenko.

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  2. Ilya Repin is truly considered to be one of the greatest painters of tsarist Russia and early Soviet Russia. I have seen most of his pictures in the Tretyakov gallery and liked them!))) In this post I liked mostly the little movie and representations 1 and 2)))They are coloureful and useful))))

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