Hermitage Group of Russian Artists to Visit, Lecture at Coloradostate University

Four members of a group of artists from St. Petersburg, Russia, known as the Hermitage Group will visit Colorado State University Oct. 6-8 to meet with art students, lecture to history and political science classes and present a public lecture and slide show.

The public presentation, "Paintings from the Russian Soul: Art and Life in the Former Soviet Union," will be 7-8:30 p.m. Oct. 8 in Room A103 Clark Building. The presentation is free and open to the public.

The four artists – Albert Bakun, Sergei Daniel, Vladimir Obatnin and Mark Tumin – represent the Hermitage Group, founded in 1969. The group is an informal association of eight painters whose works only recently are being exhibited outside Russia.

Because the former Soviet regime denied painters permission to show or sell their works publicly, the group’s painters became underground artists who took refuge among the Old Masters of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg’s famous art museum. Even when Soviet society became more open under Mikhail Gorbachev and the glasnost era, the Hermitage Group remained underground.

The group specializes in still life, figures, portraits and landscapes inspired by the Old Masters but painted in individual, dynamic styles.

While in Northern Colorado, the four artists will offer workshops to art classes in Loveland public schools and the Loveland Museum/Gallery, where they also will present a free public lecture, "The History of Russian Icons," at 7 p.m. Oct. 2. For more information about the Loveland event, call (970) 962-2410.

The artists’ visit to campus is sponsored by the university’s Russian, Eastern and Central European Studies Program, the College of Liberal Arts, the guest scholars committee of the Graduate School and the departments of art, history and political science.

Further information is available from Ken Rock in the history department, (970) 491-6084, or David Yust in the art department, (970) 491-5478.