Repino

Repino is named after the eminent painter ILYA REPIN (1844-1930) who built a house near what was then the village of Kuokkala, and lived there permanently from 1900.

The area was so peaceful and beautiful, that even after 1917, when the it became independent Finnish territory, Repin showed no inclination to leave. Formally he was now a Finnish citizen, but he continued to receive visitors and honours from Soviet Russia until his death in 1930.

In 1940 after a short but bloody winter campaign, the Finns were forced to return the Karelian isthmus to the USSR.  Repin's house (which he had called The Penates) was turned into a museum. Then, in 1944 It was burned to the ground by the Nazis. It was painstakingly re-created in the post-war era.

Ilya Efimovich Repin (1844-1930)

Repin was born in a small Ukrainian town of Tchuguev in the family of a military settler. As a boy he was trained as an icon painter. At the age of 19 he entered St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. His arrival in the capital coincided with the important event in the artistic life of the 1860s. Insisting that art should be close to real life, the "Peredvizhniky", a group of fourteen young artists, refused to use mythological subjects for their diploma works, and left the Academy in the so-called 'Riot of the Fourteen'.

Their struggle left an indellible impression on Repin, who more than any other artist, was to capture the social and spiritual energy of his time on canvas.
His depiction of Musorgsky's alcoholic appearance shortly before his death is almost brutally honest.. Repin captured not only the likeness and personality of the composer, but he managed also to depicted also Musorgsky's artistic credo in the most graphic way.

In other words, if the portrait had been a song, it is painted in exactly the way that Musorgsky would have composed it!

Musorgsky's personal weaknesses were redeemed by a great public purpose - to produce an art that whould "illuminate the life of the many". He could never bring himself to cover up the truth with pretty, superficial sentiments and melodies. As Klugman says, "Musorgsky's sardonic songs are very characteristic. He sacrificed easy success on the altar of uncompromising, searing realism"