to the United States
Konstantin Meunier – an artist who glorified the proletariat
The life of the Belgian master Constantin Meunier is not eventful. But his creative biography is unusual. He began as a sculptor, attending a class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels and the workshop of Sh. O. Freken, a follower of classicism. Then for many years engaged in painting. Continue reading
Camille Corot: “I write with my heart”
The large, half a century long, creative life of the French artist Camille Corot (1796–1875) was, as it were, subject to the change of seasons. In the winter months he worked in the Paris workshop, often visiting the opera and the conservatory. But the happiness of communicating with wildlife meant for the master incomparably more than visiting museums and concert halls. Every year with the onset of spring, he set off on a journey through various regions of France to write etudes. Many of them have become pearls of plein-air painting. Continue reading
Anton Refrezhier – born in Moscow
Refrege was born in Moscow in the year of the first Russian revolution. This fact would seem irrelevant to the biography of an American artist: after all, his father took him to his homeland, to France, when he was still a teenager. In Paris, the boy’s artistic inclinations, inherited from his Russian ancestors, appeared: his maternal grandfather was a famous violinist, his grandmother was a ballerina of the Mariinsky Theater, and Anton himself became interested in the sculptor’s craft. Continue reading