Expert Talks: Impressionism in Russia

As the leading European art metropolis, beginning in the 1860s, Paris attracted Russian painters such as Ilia Repin from the academies of Moscow and St. Petersburg. They encountered the works of Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir in the French capital and were inspired by the subject matter and style of the French Impressionists. Upon returning to Russia, they painted outdoors and sought to depict the fleetingness of a moment in their depictions of everyday Russian life. Even later painters such as Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, and Kazimir Malevich developed their new art from the Impressionist study of light. They considered themselves Impressionists before founding the Russian avant-garde with expressive Rayonism and nonrepresentational Suprematism after 1910. 
 
Art experts Rosalind Polly Blakesley (University of Cambridge), Susanne Strätling (Freie Universität Berlin), Irina Vakar (State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow), and Tatiana Yudenkova (State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow) discuss the reception of French painting in Russia, a subject that has received little attention to date.