Konstantin Meunier - an artist who glorified the proletariat
The life of the Belgian master Constantin Meunier is not eventful. But his creative biography is unusual. He began as a sculptor, visiting the class of the Academy of Fine…

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Paul Gauguin - “the world of Tahiti”
When you get to the hall where the paintings of Gauguin hang, you find yourself in a special world of images, mysteriously flickering colors, slow rhythms. Everything here is unusual…

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Antique Cologne
Cologne ... Many have heard about this German city on the Rhine, a major center of medieval European culture. The well-known Cologne Cathedral is an unsurpassed monument of Gothic architecture.…

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Two portraits of the actress Strepetova
There are destinies that strike the imagination with unusualness and inner completeness — such is the life of Pelageya Antipevna Strepetova (1850–1903), difficult and bright, full of dramatic turns. At…

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Ordinary Magic Glass
The expression "Venetian glass" has become a household word. It is used in the appreciation of the artistic merit of glass. And it is not by chance that the largest…

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cruel prohibitions were

James Whistler: “I am an artist and“ born ”in Petersburg”

James Whistler, an Anglo-American artist, was born July 11, 1834 in Lowell, the industrial city of the United States. Staying in Russia largely affected the formation of his talent. Whistler arrived in St. Petersburg as a teenager in the fall of 1843, when his father, a railway engineer, was invited by the tsarist government to build a railway that was supposed to connect the two capitals.

The years of childhood and adolescence, spent by the future artist in Russia, are the most cloudless and bright years in his full shocks of life. Continue reading

Giacomo Manzu – Coast of Truth

Creativity Mantsu is a surprisingly natural synthesis of truth, clarity of artistic ideas and originality of the visual image. His method is truly realistic, but this is realism, say, not of the 19th century, but of this century, including philosophical generalization and everyday narration, the elusively tender poetry of feelings and the visible objectivity of forms.

It is significant that everyone studying the art of Manzu sees in it and singles out for himself something special, the most exciting. In his work there are so many different facets that it equally strongly attracts even artists of opposite directions. Continue reading

Hubert Robert – “Painter of Ruins”

Antique ruins, then reflected in the calm waters, then almost hidden by thickets of climbing plants, shrubs. Peaceful rural nature, almost always clear sky. Through the gaps of trees make their way out the dying rays of the sun. Soft play of close colors, remarkable skill in depicting architecture, human figures, in the transfer of the finest natural states. Such is the collective image of painting by the French artist Hubert Robert.

He was born in Paris in 1733. Nineteen year old boys began to attend the workshop of the sculptor Slodtts, who instilled in him a love of antiquity. Continue reading

"Boris Godunov" and "Vasily Shuisky" by Ivan Shtenglin
In the middle of the 18th century, the interest of the Russian society in national history increased. Ivan Shtenglin, a master from Augsburg, Germany, who worked in Russia, completed from…

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Caravaggio - "an excellent rival of nature"
At the turn of the XVI – XVII centuries in Italy, famous for great painters, poets, scientists and humanists, a very peculiar artist appeared. His paintings caused a genuine sensation.…

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Venice School of Painting
The heritage of the Venetian school of painting is one of the most striking pages in the history of the Italian Renaissance. The “Pearl of the Adriatic” - a quaintly…

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