The coming seminar will take place in Repino (former Penaty), a suburb of St.-Petersburg. The site of the Seminar is in the "green belt" of St.-Petersburg, within 1 hour to downtown St.-Petersburg by public transport; it is named after the famous Russian painter Ilya Repin whose estate museum is at walking distance. We plan to reserve two days for trips to St. Petersburg and to its wonderful suburbs. We are sure you will appreciate one of the most brilliant places in Russia.
Ilya Efimovich Repin ranks as the most prominent figure of nineteenth-century Russian realism. Famous Russian painter Ivan Kramskoi once said, «Repin is capable of depicting the Russian peasant exactly as he is. I know many artists who have painted peasants, some very well, but none of them ever approached Repin's portrayal.»
Repin set himself up at Penaty in 1903. Yet, construction work was still in progress there for the next ten years - according to the artist's plan, under his supervision and often with his direct participation. The forest was transformed into a park with ponds, alleys and summerhouses. The house itself was rebuilt as fit as possible for an artist's work and life. The architecture of the house was a well-accorded combination of elements of Old Russian style and northern wooden modern.
At Penaty, Repin produced a few big canvases on historical subjects and on themes from contemporary life, a large Testament-based cycle and many portraits. These Penaty-period paintings are not as textbook knowledge as his earlier work. Many of them - some undoubtedly very successive - have been scattered about the world. As well as conveying the master's thoughts and sentiments of the time, they also stand out as certain pictorial solutions, a further step in the development of the painter's formal system in the 20th century.
Penaty proved a kind of Mecca for many celebrities. M.Gorky, A.Kuprin, I.Bunin, Yu.Annenkov, L.Andreyev, V.Rozanov frequented it. The Repin museum, as it stands now, was opened on 24 June 1962. The museum's exhibition centerpiece are the house's memorial rooms. Their interior gives justice to the most interesting period at Penaty, between 1905 and 1914. The I.E.Repin Museum-Estate "Penaty" is a unique historical monument. It has been awarded by UNESCO Foundation the Site of World Cultural Heritage badge.
More information on Repin's creative work: