Rainbow in Kirillov

The end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s were a difficult, sometimes contradictory, period in the history of Russia. The society was changing and the art was altered as well. Once-stormy and stirring life of the unique creative organization of the country in the sphere of fine art – the Union of Russian Artists – began to lose its activity not only in the capital, but also in the province. They staged almost no large regional and All-Russian exhibitions, didn’t make creative tours of the country, stopped to buy the best works for museum collections. The traditional professionally developed painting and drawing culture was pushed into the background. They began to lose spiritual guiding lines in the Russian culture which expressed its national originality, its fundamental tie with its time and its land. At that time a group of like-minded persons – the artists of Vologda – united into a creative and exhibition union which was called “Rainbow”. The painter Yuri Korobov is justly considered to be its main initiator. The idea of unification was actively supported by famous artists of Vologda.

“The purport of our union lies in its name. On the one hand, the artists participating in it have the same aspiration for expressing colour equivalents of their feelings of the outward things in their works. It comes from the folk art traditions, is connected with aesthetic principles of icon-painting, and is concordant with the Russian realistic school of painting at the turn of the 19^th – 20^th centuries. On the other hand, the artists differ from each other as colours in the rainbow and they are independent of any influence because they work individually”, Yuri Korobov said. The first exhibition of the “Rainbow” in 1995 was a great success. It was justly called the display of strong personalities, original artist’s worlds, united with the common goal - to show the potential of the Vologda’s painting culture on a high professional level.

The Vologda’s artists of the Creative and Exhibition Union “Rainbow” prove the vitality of national traditions in the modern culture of the Russian North with their oeuvres.

L.M. Kharlapenkova head of the Sector of Exposition and Exhibition Designing