The Itinerants: The Masters of Russian Realism : Second Half of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (Schools & Movements)
by Yelena Nesterova
Category: Art

This group of Russian painters, whose work is little known in the West, was the most remarkable in the history of Russian art. Founded in the mid-19th century, the Society for Itinerant Art Exhibitions (known as Peredvizhniki in Russian) consisted of a group of realist painters who decided that the best way for their work to be seen was to hold exhibitions in the Salon style of the French painters of the time, but in the form of travelling shows which moved around Russia. This helped to popularise the work of these painters, and of Russian art in general, and it helped them to sell their paintings and thus finance their work. The painters traveled with the exhibitions, recording the lives and customs of their fellow countrymen, and providing an insight into the life in Tsarist Russia, right up until the 1918 Revolution.