Soicher Marin
Russian Impressionist
The history of Russian Impressionist painting is the tale of an extraordinary movement in the art of the twentieth century. It entailed the sponsorship of realistic painting on a scale unmatched anywhere in the world, and engaged for decades, the talents of thousands of artists across a vast, multicultural empire.
The concept of “Soviet Social Realism” (formulated in 1932) a.k.a. Russian Impressionism ran counter to artistic development in the West in fundamental ways. It emphasized the social role of art; it insisted on the superiority of content over form and required a wholesale return to traditional skills, regarding history and European art from the Renaissance as a living source of inspiration.
If the French Impressionist pallet can be considered feminine, then the natural counter in verisimilitude is the masculine pallet of the Russian Impressionists: a legacy in oil paint of a vast country, landscape, its people and their history.
Spring Movement
RA-0226
Pears
RA-0231
Snow, circa 1951
RA-0205
Pioneer Girl, circa 1970 (Variation)
RA-0167