Maria Drobyshevskaya, Maksim Prokop’ev

Novosibirsk State University, Russia

Unfortunately, the art of Siberian artists has been often neglected. But it is art of outstanding Siberian masters, such as P. Jakubowski and O. Jankus, which reveals a peculiar artistic worldview, enables us to perceive the national identity of the artists, with a reliable understanding of historical and artistic context of the epoch, thus giving us a chance to comprehend the history of our country.
Drawing on yet unpublished materials, the author will examine artistic, theoretical and epistolary heritage of P. Jakubowski and O. Jankus, which gives an opportunity to trace the development of Siberian avant-garde as a reflection of the artists’ national identity. P. Jakubowski and O. Jankus had no art education, however, the mastery of their artwork is doubtless, such a phenomenon is a unique chance to analyze the development of avant-garde art on the periphery, particularly in Novosibirsk and Tomsk, and especially in the context of the time of crisis in the early 20th century. Besides, within the framework of theoretical and epistolary heritage of Siberian artists, painting fully reflects ideas and views of the artists (“Manifesto of synthetical dynamism”, 1920 by O. Jankus; P. Jakubowski’s letters and diaries of the period from 1914 till 1921, and memoirs of the inner circle of the artist).
As a result of a careful study of works by P.  Jakubowski and O. Jankus, features allowing us to talk about some sort of a synthesis of the periphery national identity and “Siberian eclecticism” are revealed. Being the representatives of ideas of their time, both artists could not avoid the influence of the course of history. Their turn to avant-garde was motivated by severe social conditions, political instability, and the idea that “art advances life” (O. Jankus “Manifesto of synthetical dynamism”, 1920, Tomsk, p. 3).
Thus, having no academic education or opportunity to acquaint themselves with works of European artists, the painters came in their art to leading European painting trends. In the light of the newfound heritage of Siberian masters the conception of “periphery avant-garde” gets a completely new meaning.

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Olga Ivanova

The publishing house “Prosvescheni”, Russia

The unique creative method of Evgeny Kibrik (1906–1978) as one of the most prominent classics of the Soviet graphic art of the 20th century allows us to find out how the vivid and moving images of characters by R. Rolland, Ch. De Coster, A. Pushkin, N. Gogol and M. Zoshchenko appeared in the artist’s work.
The illustrator’s keen perception of the place, time, and actual events helped him to create realistic and original images of other peoples and epochs. When creating the images, Kibrik searched for the characters’ prototypes in real life. In their appearance the artist sought to find the necessary component that would tie the past and the present. The key role in his work was to be played by the Stanislavsky system that helped him attain historical credibility and vitality of the composition.
The distinctive character of Evgeny Kibrik’s creative method is considered to be national pride and cultural heritage, which today may play a leading role in forming the ideology of the contemporary artists.
The author of the research attempts to inquire into the evolution of the outstanding master’s style scrutinizing a wide thematic range he worked with.
The analysis of the method of creating a graphical image of a literary character is seen as a fundamental theoretical problem (from collecting historical data and working with the prototypes to creating images themselves) in which theoretical, methodological and philosophical facets of the artist’s work predominate.

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Svetlana Gracheva

Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, Russia

Since the foundation of the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts, its education system has been mainly based on the study of the Renaissance culture. Italy, with its great art heritage, rich collections, and unforgettable nature was an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Russian masters, turned to it as to a center of European culture. In the 20th — early 21th centuries the St.-Petersburg academic school retains strong interest in the Renaissance art, despite all the changes occurring in contemporary art and the global review of traditions. A. A. Mylnikov, the greatest representative of  St. Petersburg painters, turned repeatedly to the interpretation of Renaissance images, deriving from the painting by Giorgione, Titian, El Greco. Today St. Petersburg academic school is connected with art work of the following artists: O. A. Eremeev, A. S. Charkin, V. S. Pesikov, K. Lee, H. V. Savkuev, A. K. Bystrov, N. P. Fomin, S. N. Repin, A. V. Chuvin, B. D. Sveshnikov, V. A. Mylnikova, A. A. Pakhomov and others. These are the masters of the St.-Petersburg school of contemporary academic art in their different styles and art movements. The Renaissance art becomes some kind of a starting point for them. Modern masters interpret the Renaissance ideas in different ways. N. Blokhin, V. Mogilevtsev put an emphasis on strict academic drawing, brought to masterful perfection. L. Kirillova, Y. Behova, N. Ryzhikova are fascinated with quattrocento painting, while sculptors P. Shevchenko, I. Korneev are captivated by plastic discoveries of Donatello and Michelangelo. Renaissance motives are revealed in portraiture by Y. Kaluta, V. Borovik, E. Zubov and in landscape paintings by A. Bliok, N. Tsitsin, M. Atayants, M. Razdoburdin. There is no doubt, that in the works of almost each of the artists landscape images of Italy, painted from nature and memories, can be found. One of the most spectacular recent events was the exhibition “Inspired by Italy” in the Russian Academy Fine Arts Museum, which showed a retrospective of Russian artists’ Italian impressions from the 18th century to the present day. Recently, the I. Repin St. Petersburg State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture held a great number of exhibitions devoted to contemporary academic art in different Italian cities: Bologna, Venice, Florence.

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Hisashi Yakou

Hokkaido University, Japan

In the mid-1960s, young Russian artists from Moscow and the cities of Vladivostok and Ussuriysk in Primorsky Krai formed the Shikotan Group, named after the island where they summered for months at a time and created thousands of landscape paintings. Their activities lasted until 1991, when the group disappeared soon after the demise of the communist regime. The area including Shikotan Island forms the southern Kuril Islands in the Okhotsk Sea. The artists fascinated with the wilderness of Shikotan’s beautiful sea coasts and rolling hills and those, who were acquainted with young women workers at the largest fish factory in Far Eastern Russia, represented Shikotan’s landscape idyllically, with a tranquil bay and a distinctive form of double volcano. A particular composition, comprising a bay in the middle plane and a distant view of the volcanic Mt. Tyatya on Kunashir Island, recalls views of Naples, a preferred stop on the Grand Tours of Europe, especially for nineteenth-century Russian artists eager to work abroad. This paper intends to reconstruct the Shikotan Group’s activities based on field research and interviews with the artists, starting with the group leader, Oleg Loshakov. Further, it aims to describe the characteristics of the style discernible in their paintings, which can be well-illustrated by comparing them with the so-called “Soviet Impressionist Paintings,” a new definition recently preferred especially by American (U. S.) collectors.

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