Curated category
20th-century Russian painters
- Marc ChagallMarc Chagall spent nearly a century alive on earth, and almost every one of those years was spent either fleeing something or painting it.
- Alexei LeonovAlexei Arkhipovich Leonov was born on the 30th of May 1934 in Listvyanka, a small settlement in West Siberian Krai, and he died in Moscow on the 11th of…
- Nicholas RoerichNicholas Roerich left behind more than 7,000 paintings, a spiritual movement that still has followers today, and an international treaty signed at the White…
- Wassily KandinskyWassily Kandinsky stood in his studio one day and stared at a painting on the wall for a long moment before realising it was his own work, hanging upside…
- Vladimir MayakovskyVladimir Mayakovsky shot himself through the heart on the 14th of April 1930, and then the suspicions began. The bullet pulled from his body did not match…
- Ilya RepinIlya Repin painted a dying man in four sittings. The subject was Modest Mussorgsky, one of Russia's greatest composers, ravaged by alcoholism and depression.
- Kazimir MalevichKazimir Malevich hung a black quadrilateral painting in the upper corner of a room in Petrograd, the very spot Russian households reserved for sacred icons.
- Natalia GoncharovaNatalia Goncharova was born on the 3rd of July 1881, the same year as Picasso and Fernand Leger, in the small village of Nagaevo in what is now the Chernsky…
- Mikhail VrubelMikhail Vrubel arrived at a Kiev train station in 1884 dressed like a young Venetian from a Tintoretto painting: black velvet costume, short trousers…
- El LissitzkyEl Lissitzky spent his final months of 1941 ill in Moscow, his tuberculosis now in its gravest stage. Yet he kept working.