Vasily Surikov

Born in Krasnoiarsk in 1848, Surikov died in Moscow in 1916. He is one of the great masters of history painting, and he occupies a special place in Russian culture. Like Delacroix, he believed that history was not a pretext for nice painting but an inexorable drama with neither culprits nor innocents but rather people driven by invisible forces. He was very knowledgeable about Russian history, and...