Landscape Painting in Russian Fine Art after Levitan. The Ivanovo Region in Painting: A Century’s Experience

The article discusses the issues of regional art schools and the place of landscape in the modern classification of genres in art based on the material of the intermuseum exhibition project The Ivanovo Region in Painting. The 20th-21st Centuries, conceived and implemented in Ivanovo in 2024. The author indicates the stages of formation and development of the landscape genre in Russian painting up to the 20th century, finding some parallels with the history of landscape painting in English art. The project of the Ivanovo museum community, where more than 60 works of landscape painting were presented, leads the author to the conclusion that after I.I. Levitan, for over a century, the Volga motifs have given an impulse of inspiration to subsequent generations of artists of the Ivanovo Region. In their works, they created artistic images of the cities of the region, such as Yuryevets, Palekh, Plyos, Kineshma, and Shuya, which have gone beyond mere geographical names and become landmarks on the cultural map of Russia, symbolizing “Russianness”, Russian landscape, and the Russian soul. In the author’s opinion the exhibition project is a vivid evidence of the existence of an independent regional art school of landscape painting. It is argued that landscape, along with historical painting, assumes particular importance among all other genres, especially in times of social crises associated with the danger of the loss of national identity.