Imperial Academy of Arts

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Imperial Academy of Arts

The Russian Academy of Arts, informally known as the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, was opened by Count Ivan Shuvalov

Ivan Shuvalov

Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov was called the Maecenas of the Russian Enlightenment and the first Russian Minister of Education. Russia's first theatre, university, and Academy of Arts were instituted with his active participation....
under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts in 1757.

The academy had been located in Shuvalov's palace on Sadovaya Street until 1764, when Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned its first rector

Rector

The word rector has a number of different meanings, but all of them indicate an academic, religious or political administrator.The word "rector" also appears in many modern languages, such as Albanian, Dutch language, Spanish language, Catalan language and Romanian language....
, Alexander Kokorinov

Alexander Kokorinov

Alexander Filippovich Kokorinov was one of the founding fathers of the Russian Academy of Arts. He was born in Siberia in the family of an architect attached to one of Demidov factories....
, to design a new building for the academy.

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The Russian Academy of Arts, informally known as the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, was opened by Count Ivan Shuvalov

Ivan Shuvalov

Rector

Alexander Kokorinov

Neoclassicism

Neoclassicism is the name given to quite distinct Cultural movement in the Decorative art and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw upon Western classical art and culture ....
edifice. Konstantin Thon

Konstantin Thon

Konstantin Andreyevich Thon, also spelled Ton , was an official architect of Russian Empire during the reign of Nicholas I of Russia. His major works include the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the Grand Kremlin Palace and the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow....
was responsible for the sumptuous decoration of the interiors. He also designed a quay

Quay

A quay is a wharf or bank where ships and other vessels are loaded. A quay may be constructed parallel or perpendicular to the bank of a waterway....
side in front of the edifice and adorned it with two 3000-year-old sphinx

Sphinx

A sphinx is a zoomorphic mythological figure which is depicted as a recumbent lion with a human head. It has its origins in sculpted figures of Old Kingdom Ancient Egypt, to which the ancient Greeks applied their own name for a female monster, the "strangler", an archaic figure of Greek mythology....
es, which had to be brought from Egypt

Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
.

Ivan Betskoy

Ivan Betskoy

Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi or Betskoy was a Russian school reformer who served as Catherine II of Russia's advisor on education and President of the Imperial Academy of Arts for thirty years ....
reorganized the academy into a de-facto government department which supervised matters concerning art throughout the country, distributing orders and awarding ranks to artists. The academy vigorously promoted the principles of Neoclassicism by sending the most notable Russian painters abroad, in order to learn the ancient and Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
styles of Italy and France. It also had its own sizable collection of choice artworks intended for study and copying.

In the mid-19th-century the Academism

Academic art

Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academy or universities.Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Acad?mie des beaux-arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism, and the art that followed these two mo...
of training staff, much influenced by the doctrines of Dominique Ingres, was challenged by a younger generation of Russian artists who asserted their freedom to paint in a Realistic style

Realism (visual arts)

Realism is a visual art style that depicts the actuality of what the eyes can see. Realists render everyday life characters, situations, dilemmas, and objects, all in verisimilitude....
. The adherents of this movement became known as peredvizhniki

Peredvizhniki

Peredvizhniki , often called The Wanderers or The Itinerants in English, were a group of Russian realism artists who in protest at academic restrictions formed an artists' cooperative which evolved into the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions in 1870....
and, led by Ivan Kramskoi

Ivan Kramskoi

Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi was a Russian Painting and art critic. He was the intellectual leader of the Russian democratic art movement 1860?1880....
, publicly broke with the Academy and started its own exhibitions which traveled from town to town across Russia. Ilya Repin, Mikhail Vrubel

Mikhail Vrubel

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel is usually regarded as the greatest Russian painter of the Symbolism movement. In reality, he deliberately stood aloof from contemporary art trends, so that the origin of his unusual manner should be sought in the Late Byzantine and Early Renaissance painting....
and some other painters, however, still regarded the academy's training as indispensable for development of basic professional skills.

After the advancement of 20th century modernism, European and American art schools, embraced thinkers who rebelled against nineteenth century academic and historicist traditions, believing the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated. While art education in the West was changing, traditional academic teachings were nourished in Russian/Soviet Academies.

“As a school, Soviet Socialist Realism surpassed the best naturalist and realist genre painting in the West during the third quarter of the twentieth century! It was a 'renaissance of realism' behind the Iron Curtain.” - Vern Grosvenor Swanson

During the years of the Soviet era, academies were free (financed by the government), but incredibly competitive. Many students would continuously apply for sometimes six, seven years in a row to be accepted to the Academy, without success. With twenty available spots thousands of applicants, the competition was brutal.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917

Russian Revolution of 1917

The Russian Revolution is the series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union....
the academy passed through a series of transformations. It was successively renamed the Russian Academy of Arts in 1933, the Academy of Arts of the USSR in 1947, and back the Russian Academy of Arts in 1991. The Russian Academy of Arts has been headquartered in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital and the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia of the Russian Federation. It is also the largest European cities and metropolitan areas, with the Moscow metropolitan area ranking among the largest urban areas in the world....
since 1947. The historic building on the Neva River in St. Petersburg now accommodates the Ilya Repin St. Petersburg Academic Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, but is still informally known as the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.

Imperial Academy of Arts

See also

External links