Repin Ilya Yefimovich

Ilya Yefimovich Repin is a Russian painter and draughtsman, one of the most influential and diverse artists of the era of the "great reforms" and "counter—reforms". Academician, professor and full member of the Imperial Academy of Arts, teacher, member of the Association of Peredvizhniki. His work became an "encyclopedia of post-reform Russia," according to the ideologist of the Peredvizhniki, Vladimir Stasov.

Biography

Repin was born on July 24 (August 5, new style), 1844, in Chuguev, Kharkov province, into the family of a retired soldier who was engaged in horse trading, and a mother who taught literacy and arithmetic not only to her children, but also to peasant children. His love of painting was instilled in him by his cousin Trofim, who presented his young relative with a set of watercolors.

At the age of 13, Repin began studying with the local icon painter Ivan Bunakov. At the age of 16, he went to work with a nomadic art group of icon painters. In 1863, Repin went to St. Petersburg to continue his studies at the Imperial Academy of Arts. The first time, he did not enroll and became a student at a preparatory evening school, and later he returned to the Academy for tests and was accepted. He spent a total of eight years at the academy.

For his thesis, a painting based on the biblical motif "The Resurrection of the Daughter of Jairus", Repin received a Large gold medal and the right to a six—year internship abroad. During a three-year trip, he visited Italy, England, and lived in France for a long time, where he studied the Impressionist style, but did not adopt it for himself, considering it too lightweight.

In 1878, Repin joined the Association of Peredvizhniki, but left it in 1891, and returned in 1898. From 1894 to 1907, he taught at the Academy of Fine Arts, and was rector of the Higher Art College in 1898-1899.

Repin spent the last 30 years of his life at his Penaty estate in the St. Petersburg suburb of Kuokkala (which became part of independent Finland after the revolution). He continued to work, although not as intensively as before. In recent years, he has turned to biblical subjects. In Kuokkala, Repin wrote his memoirs, and a number of his essays were included in the book of memoirs "The Distant Near."

Repin was married twice. His first wife is Vera, the daughter of the famous architect Alexei Shevtsov. Four children were born in this marriage. After 15 years of marriage, the couple broke up. The artist's second wife was the writer Natalia Nordman, a lady who amazed Repin's friends with her progressivity. The couple had no children. In 1914, Nordman died of tuberculosis.

Creation

Repin is a representative of realism. He painted paintings on social themes, explored the way of life of peasants and intellectuals, reflected on historical events and world art. His artistic language was characterized by plasticity, he perceived various stylistic trends — from Spanish and Dutch artists of the 17th century to Alexander Ivanov and modern French Impressionists.

Repin created a gallery of portraits of his contemporaries, worked as a historical painter and master of everyday scenes. In the field of historical painting, he was attracted by the opportunity to reveal the emotional expressiveness of the proposed situation.

Among Repin's famous works:
"Boatmen on the Volga" (1873) — one of the early paintings, which became a metaphor for the hard lot of many people of that time.
"Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan, November 16, 1581" (1883-1885) is a painting conceived as a parallel to the tragic events of 1881, namely the assassination of Tsar Alexander II and the execution of members of the revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volya.
"We did not wait" (1884-1888) is a painting from a cycle dedicated to the fate of the first populist revolutionaries in Russia.

Teaching activities

Repin brought up a whole galaxy of famous artists: Boris Kustodiev, Igor Grabar, Ivan Kulikov, Philip Malyavin, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Nikolai Feshin, Valentin Serov.

The basis of Repin's teaching was that the best teacher and mentor of an artist in comprehending beauty is nature itself. He taught students a thorough study of the anatomy and structure of the human body, without suppressing the creative potential of students. He recommended actively visiting exhibitions and museums, and working a lot with sketches. To train the image of a person, he advised creating self-portraits.

Additional facts

Repin was a knight of the Legion of Honor.
He loved to communicate with prominent figures of his time and created their portraits. Among his models were composer Modest Mussorgsky, writers Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev, and poet Korney Chukovsky.
Repin actively contributed to the development of theaters, cultural institutions, exhibitions and museums, often giving away his own works for free.