About a hundred years ago a famous exhibition of the Russian portrait was collected and held under the initiative and under the guidance of Grand Prince Nikolay Mikhailovich. The exhibition sparked the interest to the national history and became the basis for the creation of the five-volume illustrated edition «The Russian Portraits of the 18th and the 19th Centuries». A century-old Russian tradition of the worship of the icons of the saints and the fashion for the pictorial portrait brought by Peter I from Europe which allowed to preserve the images of the predecessors and to give them from generation to generation made the portraiture an important element of moral education. Now due to many reasons the art of the portraiture has not only lost its former range, but has turned into luxury rated highly by few. Quite often the depictions of the whole generations of our compatriots will be restricted for our ancestors only with the documentary photos, though there were prominent people who left their mark on history among them, and only keepers and specialists will see the portraits of previous centuries, except for rare temporary exhibitions when they are available to visitors. Nothing can be worst for history and culture than oblivion in the Motherland! Several years ago the KITEZH Art Publishers commenced developing the idea and preparing a series of albums «Russian Pictorial Portraits» within the frame of a multi-volume album project «Three Centuries of Russian Painting». Now we are glad to call your attention to the first of these albums, «St. Petersburg Portraiture». Our project would fail without our strong and infatuated allies, the more so as we believe we are to go further initiating the creation of the gallery of the Modern Russian Portraiture. The International Academy of Sciences for Ecological, Human, and Environmental Safety, and first of all its president Mr. Viktor Rogalev proved to be the most important team which managed to obtain the necessary funds, to create about a hundred portraits of our contemporaries, presenting to us and to history not only works of art, but, as we dare hope, the new names of Russian portraitists whose creations will be well-known in the future. Unexpected as it may seem, the participation of the International Academy of Ecology in the project is in fact absolutely appropriate. We hope that joining the ecology of the material world and of the spiritual world of a human being we made an important step towards the moral renaissance without which it is impossible for the society to move forward. The attention to history, to historical persons and their lives in particular, the upbringing of a younger generation by their example is one of the most important problems of preserving and developing the nation. And we would like to hope that this album, the first one of the series of albums devoted to the portraiture, will be acknowledged by you with understanding, while we in our turn are ready to accept your advice and assistance in the preparation of new editions. |
