Ilya Efimovich Repin (Rus. doref. Ilya Efimovich Rпpin, July 24 [August 5] 1844, Chuguev, Russian Empire — September 29, 1930, Kuokkala, Finland) — Russian painter, teacher, Professor, full member of the Imperial Academy of arts.
From the very beginning of his career, in the 1870s, Repin became one of the key figures of Russian realism. The artist managed to solve the problem of reflecting the diversity of the surrounding life in a pictorial work, in his work he was able to cover all aspects of modernity, touch on topics that concern the public, and vividly reacted to the anger of the day. Repin's artistic language was characterized by plasticity, he perceived various stylistic trends from the Spaniards and Dutch of the XVII century to Alexander Ivanov and modern French Impressionists.
The heyday of Repin's work occurred in the 1880s. He creates a gallery of portraits of contemporaries, works as a historical artist and master of everyday scenes. In the field of historical painting, he was attracted by the opportunity to reveal the emotional expressiveness of the proposed situation. The artist's element was modernity, and even creating paintings on the themes of the legendary past, he remained a master of the burning present, reducing the distance between the viewer and the characters of his works. According to art critic V. V. Stasov, Repin's work is an "encyclopedia of post-reform Russia". Repin spent the last 30 years of his life in Finland, at his Penaty estate in Kuokkala. He continued to work, though not as hard as before. In recent years, he has turned to biblical subjects. In Kuokkala, Repin wrote memoirs, a number of his essays were included in the book of memoirs "Far near".
