Abstract

The author focuses on the art of the Wanderers (Peredvizhniki) and the history of the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions (TPKhV), which need nowadays certain reconsideration. The Wanderers movement is the main phenomenon of the 19th-century Russian culture, associated with the development of realistic traditions in the spirit of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky’s writings. The best works of the Wanderers made up the national art school and contributed to the formation of national identity. During the first three decades of the society its artists were trendsetters of style and fashion and the popularity of their exhibitions grew steadily in the capitals and provinces. These exhibitions changed the Russian art life and significantly influenced the development of the art market. They forced society to reconsider the attitude towards contemporary art and collecting. They raised the status of artists, but their dreams to not only educate the public, but also to earn money (as stated in the TPKhV Charter) through exhibitions never came true. The heyday of Wanderers movement was naturally replaced by a period of decline, while its oldest members displayed their conservatism. Nevertheless, the Wanderers stand at the origins of the fundamental processes that determined the path of the further development of Russian art, i. e. impressionism, symbolism, modernism. For a long time, the Wanderers movement was one of the principal subjects of study of Soviet art history. In the last third of the 20th century, many critics and specialists were immersed in the study of the art of the subsequent decades, i. e. the Silver Age and avant-garde, while the Wanderers’ art was neglected as part of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics. The contemporary art inclining towards the concept and posing questions of being reveals the most unexpected analogies within the Wanderers’ art, despite the gap between the classical and ultramodern views. The popularity of the Wanderers’ paintings was also exploited in the 20thcentury mass culture. This interest is explained by the fact that more than one generation of our compatriots was brought up on them and many of them are part of the cultural code of the Russian nation.