UNIT 5

Let’s Read and Talk about Painting

Pre-reading task: If you can answer these questions without reading the text, then proceed to the development tasks.  If not, please, refer to the following texts for information about the development of critical realism in Russia, and also about Russian painters' love for genre and history painting in critical realism.

 

    1. What trend in art did the Itinerants represent?

    2. What were the 1860s marked by from the historical point of view?

    3. What united the foremost Russian writers, composers and artists of those times?

    4. Were the Itinerants connected with the Russian Academy of Fine Arts? Why?

    5. With what end in view were the Travelling Exhibitions held?

    6. Were they popular with the common people? Why?
    7. What genres of painting were represented at such exhibitions?

    8. How long did the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions exist?

    9. What happened to it? Did it break up?

    10. The Itinerants, as masters of critical realism, received world wide acclaim, didn't they? Why?