"Darkness and hopelessness"

Students of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts named after Ilya Repin put up paintings in the institution in which they reflected their perception of war. On the canvases are the wives of the dead military, television propaganda and volunteers going to the front.

“Paper” tells how these paintings appeared, why the leadership of the academy decided to remove them from the building and which exhibition (not anti -war) is shown in the institution now.

In January 2023, students of the Academy of Arts put up paintings about the war, noted Facebook and Twitter users. One of the students explained the “paper” that the teacher asked them to write paintings on four topics:

• "Donbass";
• "The mother of the soldier";
• "I live in Russia";
• "Life of the Academy" (topic for foreign students).

Most chose the topic of war. For example, one of the exhibited works depicts a smoking man who sits at the monument to Lenin against the backdrop of an industrial city.

On Tuesday, January 24, the correspondent of Papers talked with representatives of the dean and students of the academy. As follows from their words, the authors of the paintings wrote them not for the exhibition, but for evaluation. The work was shown as part of a regular bypass: students post their work for a week.

As a result, all the students set by students - the teachers did not take them to the Academy fund, they told the “paper” in the dean’s office.

Students' works were widely dispersed in social networks. “Paper” found photos of paintings in the telegram channels “ Maxim Mirovich ” and “ Open Front ”. The author of Channel One noted that the students depicted "darkness and hopelessness of the present." “Young people are very well aware that Russia has no future,” he writes.

One of the posts with photographs of paintings scored about 2.4 thousand retweets. However, his author, the comrade -in -arms of the politician Alexei Navalny from Arkhangelsk Olga School, said that she deleted the publication for the safety of the authors. “[They] gave us support and faith in the youth of Russia, I should not harm them,” the girl wrote.

In a conversation with a “paper” , a student of the Academy, who introduced an anti -war picture, anonymously said that he was positive about publishing photographs of artists on Twitter and Facebook.

The teachers, the student says, negatively reacted to anti -war paintings. According to her, employees of the institution welcomed work that loyally cover the war. Because of this, students suggested that the teacher wanted to make an exhibition in which Russia's actions would be justified.

Four out of five points were set up for the work of the interlocutor . “If you have“ four ”according to the composition, then you either work little, or you need to make friends with the teacher,” the student said.

“The attitude towards students [who painted the paintings about the war] spoiled, the pressure and rude treatment began, ultimately the assessments underestimated,” the young man added.

Probably several students faced problems at once.

In the paintings, you can see the wife of the deceased military at the soldier's uniform, volunteers who are sent to the front by bus, and a monument in the form of death, around which the skeletons of soldiers drive a round dance.

Now students about the war have already been removed from the Academy.

On January 24, “Paper” visited the opening of another exhibition in the institution - “Donbass. Industrial portrait. " It was opened by the chairman of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, Alexander Belsky, First Deputy Head of the United Russia party in the Federal Assembly Vyacheslav Makarov and a deputy from the fair Russia - for truth, Alexander Novikov.

The exhibition about the Donbass exhibits paintings by Soviet artists from the Donetsk Republican Art Museum. However, most of the expositions were written by “Representatives of the Union of Artists of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Union of Artists of the Lugansk People’s Republic,” the Culture.rf portal reported .

The represented canvases depict workers, as well as coal and steel plants. The exhibition will be open until February 24, 2023.

What you need to know. In March, Russian artists and animators launched Utuub-channel Animators Against War, where anti-war animated videos were published. Later, the St. Petersburg artist DURAN released a new job "nothing portended." In it, the author recalls the large -scale celebrations of Victory Day, Russian films about the war that have been published in recent years, and the launch of the Mir card.

We work for you - draw up a donat so that the “paper” will continue to write about events in St. Petersburg

Photo: Maxim Mirovich / Telegram