Blind Kobzar

Сліпий кобзар

MediumOil on canvas

LocationUnknown

A blind kobzar with his bandura, the wandering singer who carried Ukrainian historical song from village to village. Trutovskyi returned to the figure more than once, most famously in his 1875 canvas placing Shevchenko himself with a kobza above the Dnipro.

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About the Artist

Kostiantyn Trutovskyi

1826–1893

Early master of Ukrainian genre painting devoted to the Ukrainian peasantry; influenced Pymonenko, Vasylkivskyi and Slastion.

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Movements

Realism

Realism is an artistic movement that sought to depict reality as accurately and objectively as possible, holding that the purpose of art is to reflect all aspects of existence, rather than merely its idealized representation. The term was introduced by the French literary critic Jules Champfleury in the 1850s to denote art that opposed Romanticism and Academicism. In the visual arts, the significance of Realism as a style is quite controversial, and its boundaries are undefined. In a narrower sense, realism is understood as positivism, a movement in the visual arts of the second half of the 19th century. One of the first realists was the French artist Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), who opened his solo exhibition “The Pavilion of Realism” in Paris in 1855. Before him, artists of the Barbizon School—Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet, and Jules Breton—worked in a realistic style. In the 1870s, realism split into two main movements: naturalism and impressionism. In contemporary painting, realism borders on the grotesque and anti-glamour.

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Also part of

Romanticism

Related Works

1864

Carolers in Ukraine

1868

Return from the Fair in Rural Ukraine

A cart of villagers coming home from a country fair, the standard occasion of Ukrainian genre painting handled without either satire or idyll. The picture became one of Trutovskyi's most reproduced compositions through the illustrated press.

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1874

Bleaching Linen

A pastoral Ukrainian genre scene of peasant women bleaching woven linen.

1875

Shevchenko with a Kobza over the Dnieper

A romantic depiction of Taras Shevchenko as a kobzar seated above the Dnipro river.