1844 -1905 · Taganrog, Saint Petersburg, Paris, Peredvizhniki and Penza

Departures of soldiers, peasant crowds and social realism make Konstantin Savitsky a great chronicler of 19th century Russia.

Konstantin Apolloovich Savitsky was born near Taganrog in 1844. Orphaned as a teenager, he entered the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg and became closer to Repin, Shishkin and artists favorable to an art more attentive to society. His travels in France and his adherence to the exhibitions of the Ambulants, the Peredvizhniki, reinforced his realism. Savitsky constructs vast collective scenes where each face, each gesture and each package participates in the story. In the war, he builds vast collective scenes where each face, each gesture and each package participates in the story. Savitsky constructs vast collective scenes where each face, each gesture and each package participates in the story. In the war, he shows mobilization from the point of view of families and recruits: military departure becomes a sum of individual separations. Meeting with the icon brings together a community around of a sacred object and distinguishes fervor, curiosity, expectation and fatigue. The painter thus excels in choral composition without making the crowd anonymous. A designer, engraver and teacher, he taught in Saint Petersburg and Moscow before founding and directing the Penza art school. His work combines social criticism, empathy and great narrative clarity. The "Konstantin Savitsky" selection notably compares War and Meeting the Icon. His reading favors atmosphere.

Savitsky gives history to those who live it together: each face carries a part of the collective destiny.