Thursday, July 02, 2015

The New Russian Religious Paintings in Kotor


I will post about our trip to Kotor in Montenegro soon.  It was a spectacular city.  So cool, I almost want to keep it a secret to myself.
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Among its many surprises is the big Orthodox Church (as in Eastern Orthodox Religion - Catholic without all the squishy liberalism!).  It had the normal icons of the saints and all, but DOMINATING the entry were four massive paintings.  These pictures can't really do justice to their size.
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They were given from the Russians to Montenegro about 3 years ago.  They are the four Evangelical Saints (John, Paul, Luke and Mark) as painted by the Russian Academy of Art.  And they are a bizarre, but wonderful, combination of heavy Religious Iconography with a serious influence of Communist Social Realism.  I have put them below, but you can select them and enlarge.  The angle is off because they were too big to get a good shot of!
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I asked, but there were no icons or prints of these new works in the shop (which is also right inside the church).
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Very Cool.
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