About the Artist
Volodymyr Sydoruk
1925–1997
Volodymyr Sydoruk (1925–1997) – Ukrainian painter. He graduated from the Kyiv Art School (1938), where he studied under I. Khvorostetskyi and Y. Kyianchenko. He participated in exhibitions (beginning in 1954). Member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine (1957). Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1985). During his lifetime, the artist held 12 solo exhibitions. He worked primarily in the genres of landscape, still life, and thematic painting. The artist’s works are held in museums in Ukraine, as well as in private collections and galleries in Ukraine, Russia, Japan, and Europe.
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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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