Kiriak Konstantinovich Kostandi ( uk, Киріак Костянтинович Костанді; russian: Кириак Константинович Костанди; – 31 October 1921) was a prominent Ukrainian painter and an art scholar. A member of the Russian realist artistic movement ''

Peredvizhniki Peredvizhniki ( rus, Передви́жники, , pʲɪrʲɪˈdvʲiʐnʲɪkʲɪ), often called The Wanderers or The Itinerants in English, were a group of Russian realist artists who formed an artists' cooperative in protest of academic restr ...

'' (lit. ''Itinerants'') he also authored several Impressionist paintings. Most of Kostandi's life and work is connected with the city of Odessa (now in

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...

) in the southwest of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

where he lived most of his life. His paintings are displayed in the museums of Odessa,

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyi ...

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

and

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

Life

Kostandi was born in 1852 in Dofinovka, close to the city of Odessa, in a family of

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

descent. Kostandi graduated from the Odessa Drawing School in 1874, and then the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1882. He then returned to Odessa, where he painted and taught at the drawing school.Kostandi, Kyriak
at the

Encyclopedia of Ukraine The ''Encyclopedia of Ukraine'' ( uk, Енциклопедія українознавства, translit=Entsyklopediia ukrainoznavstva), published from 1984 to 2001, is a fundamental work of Ukrainian Studies. Development The work was creat ...

In 1897 he joined the

. Kostandi played an important part in introducing the ideology of the Peredvizhniki to Ukraine. He was one of the founders of the Society of South Russian Artists, serving as the society's president from 1902 to 1920. In 1907 he was elected a full member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. From 1917 he served as director of the Odessa City Museum. Kostandi was a strict realist, and was opposed to every formalist trend. He was mainly a genre painter, but also did some

landscape painting Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent compo ...

and portrait painting. After his death, his followers started the ''Kostandi Society of Artists ''.

Characteristics of art

Kostandi is an artist whose canvases are built at the junction of high craftsmanship and an understanding of tragic existence. They are characterized by a wide range of social problems, which cannot but concern him. At the end of the 1880s, a change occurs in Kostandi's work. He remains committed to the genre of life but fundamentally changes the artistic approaches and his view of the essence of painting. At that time, he considers the problems of sunlight and plain air to be the most important ones. In a sense, inheriting the masters of

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

, for which the importance of temporal and psychological unity, Kostandi, in his small paintings tries to stop time and moment of feeling. His contemporaries have pointed out that Kostandi was a philosophical artist. From the 1890s all his paintings have the peculiarity of a small plotline, almost minimalism in the image, combined with a high poetic mood. It is the transmission of feelings and moods that becomes the artist's main aim.

Gallery

Sick friend by Kostandi.png, Have a sick friend (1884) Kostandi Kyriak Among the People1885.jpg, Out Into the World (1885) К. Костанді На дачі. Полудень. 1892.jpg, In the country. Noon (1892) Kostandi Landscape with a meadow.jpg, Landscape (1897) К. Костанді Розквітлий бузок, 1902.png, Lilac (1902) Костанди Кириак Ранняя весна.jpg, Early spring (1915) К. Костанді Галки. Осінь, 1915.jpg, Jackdaw. Autumn (1915)

References

Кириак Константинович Костанди

Кириак Константинович Костанди
Энциклопедия живописи и график�
art-catalog.ru

Kyriak Kostandi. Drawings and Watercolors from the Odessa Art Museum. Catalogue. Odessa, Optimum, 2010.

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kostandi, Kyriak 1852 births 1921 deaths Artists from Odesa Russian people of Greek descent 19th-century painters from the Russian Empire 20th-century Russian painters 19th-century Greek painters 20th-century Greek painters