"Family Portrait" - artists of the XVIII-XX centuries at an exhibition in the Russian Museum

ST. PETERSBURG. From August 13, visitors to the Russian Museum will be waiting for the exhibition “Portrait of a Family”, housed in the Benoit building. The exposition, consisting of works created by various artists in the XVIII-XX centuries, is supplemented by photographs of our contemporaries.

This exhibition can be called the history of the portrait genre in Russia, displayed by artists and photographers. The creators of the exposition included paintings created by masters in the Soviet period, which allows you to see how the traditions of performing family portraits have changed over the years.

A separate section is devoted to showing family portraits of the Soviet era, where the works of famous masters are shown - Andronov, Bogorodsky, Mylnikov, Zhilinsky and other artists. A special place in the exposition is occupied by paintings, where the authors of the paintings themselves are depicted in the family circle.

Ordinary family portraits had a simple plot - on the canvas were images of family members. However, thanks to the creators of these paintings, you can see what the traditional way of life of the people depicted in the portraits was, what their life was like and even how they celebrated the holidays.

In total, the exposition housed more than two hundred paintings, most of them are written in the traditional direction for Russian artists - realism. Here you can see other areas of portraiture from classicism to impressionism. Art historians attribute a part of the presented works to academicism, combining the detachment from life with the highest mastery of performance.

A separate part of the exhibition was family photographs provided by Petersburg residents from their family archives. Based on them, a media installation was created.

The exhibition is available to visitors for two months, until October 13th.

Ludmila Trautmane © Gallerix.ru