Ivan Kramskoi
| Ivan Kramskoi | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Kramskoi by Ilya Repin, 1882.
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| Born |
Ivan Nikolayevich Kramskoi 27 May [O.S. June 8] 1837 Ostrogozhsk, Voronezh Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Died | 6 April 1887 (aged 49) St. Petersburg, Russian Empire |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Education | Imperial Academy of Arts |
| Known for | Painting |
| Notable work |
The Mermaids (1871) Christ in the Desert (1872) Portrait of an Unknown Woman (1883) |
| Movement | Realism, Peredvizhniki |
| Awards | Gold medal winner (1863), five-times silver medal winner |
| Patron(s) | Pavel Tretyakov |
Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi (June 8 (O.S. May 27), 1837, Ostrogozhsk – April 6 (O.S. March 24), 1887, Saint Petersburg; Russian: Ива́н Никола́евич Крамско́й) was a Russian painter and art critic. He was an intellectual leader of the Russian democratic art movement in 1860-1880.
Kramskoi came from an impoverished petit-bourgeois family. From 1857 to 1863 he studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts; he reacted against academic art and was an initiator of the "revolt of fourteen" which ended with the expulsion from the Academy of a group of its graduates, who organized the Artel of Artists ("Артель художников").
Influenced by the ideas of the Russian revolutionary democrats, Kramskoi asserted the high public duty of the artist, principles of realism, and the moral substance and nationality of art. He became one of the main founders and ideologists of the Company of Itinerant Art Exhibitions (or Peredvizhniki). In 1863–1868 he taught at the drawing school of a society for the promotion of applied arts. He created a gallery of portraits of important Russian writers, scientists, artists and public figures (Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, 1873, Ivan Shishkin, 1873, Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov, 1876, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, 1879, Sergei Botkin, 1880) in which expressive simplicity of composition and clarity of depiction emphasize profound psychological elements of character. Kramskoi's democratic ideals found their brightest expression in his portraits of peasants, which portrayed a wealth of character-details in representatives of the common people.
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