10 years of happiness and 28 years of grief in the life of the artist Vasily Surikov
The personal life of prominent people always attracts the attention of readers, especially if it is full of piquant details, incredible stories, secrets and mysteries. But today we will talk…

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Secrets of self-portraits of famous artists: Reflection in the mirror, portrait-bacon and other oddities
Self-portrait in most cases is an instrument of narcissism, an attempt to leave your image in eternity. But if a genius takes up the matter, his image on canvas can…

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Was there a boy, or what they argue about for many years, looking at Chardin’s picture “Prayer before dinner”
He was called the "artist of animals and fruits." He had a significant influence on Henri Matisse and Paul Cezanne. In art, this artist sought naturalness and humanity as opposed…

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considerable problem

How Peter Konchalovsky managed to avoid repression and why the artist was called the Soviet Cezanne

Not many painters who disobeyed the socialist regime in times of bloody repression managed to escape punishment. Today I would like to recall the name of one of them – Pyotr Petrovich Konchalovsky. In those terrible years, the artist managed to remain a “pure” painter who avoided the embodiment of socialist reality and portraits of its leaders in his creations. Moreover, to take as a basis for his work the direction of the hostile Western art, which is why he was named in his time – the Soviet Cezanne.

It should be noted that the great merit of Anatoly Lunacharsky, the first People’s Commissar of Education of the RSFSR, was that Pyotr Petrovich was allowed to create freely, despite the attacks of critics who longed for the proletarian coup and the ecstasy of socialist work in the artist’s works. Anatoly Vasilievich convinced the guardians of the dogmas of socialist realism that Konchalovsky in his modern day “sings the poetry of our everyday life” and, apparently, the People’s Commissar did quite well. Continue reading

What riddles Claude Monet left in his painting “Poppies”

Claude Monet is an artist whose name is inseparable from impressionism. He painted landscapes, water lilies, poplars, ladies in the garden, women with umbrellas, the London parliament, boats, the Normandy coast and … poppies. He captured these delightful red meadow treasures with a single brush stroke of bright red against a background of endless green fields. The painting Poppy Field was painted in the vicinity of Argenteuil (northwestern suburb of Paris), where Monet lived between 1871 and 1878. A beautifully depicted summer day is captured in all its glory with bright poppies complementing thin clouds in a clear blue sky.

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Beloved woman of Boris Kustodiev, in whose name he overcame hellish pain and created his best works

“Dear Yulik” – that’s what Boris Kustodiev called Yulia Proshinskaya, which was everything for the artist: a faithful and selfless wife, and the greatest love, and a devoted friend, and a muse-inspirer, and a guardian angel. She was an integral part of Boris himself, who, by the will of fate, ended up in a wheelchair. It was her courageous decision, when the question arose of what to keep her husband for life – arms or legs, allowed to extend for another 10 years the creative fate of the artist. And it was during this time that he created his best works, which were included in the golden fund of world art.

The talented painter fell not only great love, but also a difficult fate. Yes, and not only on himself, but also on the woman who walked a life path with him, despite the trials and troubles.

And today, in continuation of the theme of the wives of the great and famous masters of Russian painting – an amazing and heart-rending love story of the Kustodievs.

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The world of childhood of the XIX century in the paintings of Gaetano Cierizi
Many viewers are interested in everyday painting of old masters of the past centuries, who knew how not only to reliably capture the life of their people in the smallest…

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What are the secret meanings of the image of a parrot in the paintings of great artists of different eras
For artists of the Gothic, Early Renaissance and High Renaissance, birds were part of a rich visual symbolism. In a society with limited literacy, allegorical images were vital for the…

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"The Invisible Artist", which creates paintings on people, like on canvases
Since today many acts of civil protest in China remain strictly prohibited, a well-known Chinese artist-photographer, master of the original creative camouflage of people, Liu Bolin invented a unique technique…

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