The plein air painting exhibition "Zdravnevo" in faces and destinies" brought together artists from Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine at the Ilya Repin Museum-Estate
Residents of Vitebsk and its surroundings acted as models. Among them are children, young people, girls, and pensioners. Each artist could choose a model. Irina Tkachenko from Moscow is painting a portrait of Violetta Borodich. The girl is 10 years old and, of course, is posing for an artist for the first time. She really likes the portrait: it makes her look even better than in real life. The artist herself is charmed by both the model and the Repin estate:
— I said right away: if there was a child, I would be ready to paint. It's difficult. The image of a child, purity, is always tempting to convey. I want to paint another canvas with her — among the flowers. It's incredibly calm here, I want to paint without stopping: smoothly, measuredly, and thoughtfully. You understand why Repin painted so much here and why these works were done exactly as they were. I wouldn't want to leave here, I'd like to stay overnight and look at the stars.
Tamara Nosenko, Head of the Department for Preparation and Implementation of Projects of the Interstate Fund for Humanitarian Cooperation of the CIS Member States, considers this plein air unusual:
— The international humanitarian project of the creative intelligentsia of three countries, "Minsk Initiative," has been in existence since 2015. It is, one might say, a puzzle of cultural and scientific projects in which three countries—Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine—always participate. Our first artistic project was "Three Sofias." In 2017, young artists from three countries, during joint plein air painting sessions, captured the Saint Sophia Cathedrals in Veliky Novgorod (Russia), Polotsk (Belarus), and Kyiv (Ukraine) on their canvases. The plein air session in Zdravnevo takes place in only one location, but nevertheless, we consider it unusual and significant. We managed to move away from the classical understanding of plein air: it is literary and artistic. The artists are not painting landscapes, but portraits, and these are portraits of people who live in the Repin places. Writers communicate with each of them, and then we will see, I hope, a very interesting catalog of artistic and literary works created in this legendary place.
Minsk residents will be the first to see the exhibition based on the plein air results. This will happen at the end of November - the beginning of December. Then the exhibition will be presented in Kyiv and Moscow.