Orsay Museum
Russian Art in the second half of XIXth century
Musée d'Orsay : 01.40.49.48.14. Until 8 january 2006
Modern
Russian painting plunges its roots between two major events of its
political history : The crowning of the Tsar Alexandre II in 1885
and the bloody Revolution of October 1917. A goodbye to the ancestral
academism which signed the great European romantic century. The Russian
identity is expressed in force, mirror of a culture in search of a
contemporary energy. Tolstoï writer is one of the first to
express this social perspicacity to denounce the sufferings of people
scorned such a long time. The sensitivity of the small people
becomes cultural treasure and the artists take with full hands this
providential verism, taking as a starting point the the popular prints,
the songs of cabaret, the Russian heart. There is not of real
leader charismatic to incarn this dash, but a painter such as Vasnetsov
plays definitely an important character due to its knowledge of the
history of Western art who allows him to throw a bridge between these
cultural dissidences. Another painter, Répine, transmits
the popular art from village to village and carries a politically
committed message. In this wake militant, villages workshops born
here or there, such as Abramtsevo, in the north of Moscow. Images
with powerful realism, tormented, feed of a melancholy which announces
the dark years of large Russia.
Kouzma Petrov-Vodkine - Le bain du cheval rouge 1912
