Ivan Kromskoy as a leader of young realists in painting

                                      Ivan Kramskoy

The artist, thinker, critic and teacher Ivan Kramskoy was born in 1837. When he was 20 year old and studied at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg in 1857-1863.

Then Kramskoy became the leader of young artists. They tried to find new paths in arts with a focus on links between painting and pressing social questions, on "the people's needs".

Kramskoy's most ambitious canvas is his "Christ in the Wilderness" that he finished in 1872.

Subjects of sacred history in the context of contemporary problems were of great popularity among artists and writers then. Christian themes and images served as a basis for expression of ideas of Goodness and Justice.

Jesus Christ was understood as the image of the "Ideal Man". His image in that painting expressed readiness to accept sacrifice to save the Mankind from suffering and its sins. 

Kramskoy painted his "Unknown Lady" in 1883. There is an image of a beautiful woman. She's the one who challenges social conventions, belonging to the world where warmth and sincerity in human relations have given a way to cold calculation and hypocrisy.

This picture illustrates the protest of Kramskoy and his followers against fake ideals in order to promote Humanistic values in the society which was lacking many of them.