Russian Art

Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, Borodin, Chekhov, Mussorgsky, Dostoevsky and of course, Rachmaninov. Russian music and literature is adored across the world, but Russian art is less well known. Unless you’ve been to the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, or have seen one of the rare travelling exhibitions, such as the display of portraits from the Tretyakov about to open at the National Portrait Gallery then you might not be familiar with the works of painters such as Levitan or Repin. We used Ilya Repin’s famous painting of a peasant Easter procession for our concert poster: on the face of it, it seems to be a lovely scene, but look closer and there are some brutally realistic details that illustrate the hardship, chaos and poverty that most Russians lived under. To go with the poster, we’ve put together a little gallery of other Russian art that shows religious life: