Virtually no pre - christian monuments of Russian art have been preserved. Icon and mural painting (frescoes) came to Russia from Byzantium along with Christianity.

The Russian artists turned out to be brilliant disciples. The recent pagans soon developed Russian art from a provincial branch of the Byzantine mother art into impressive independent school with pronounced ethnic features.

Russian icon painting reached its climax in the 15th century, its Golden Age. Only a few painters' name from the medieval period are known. Theophanes the Greek, of Byzantine extraction, was one of the most spectacular personages, with his austere and dramatic murals in Novgorod the Great churches. Andrei Rublev (c. 1370 - 1430), the best of Russia's artists, was most renowned for his icon of "The Trinity," one of the world's greatest artistic achievements. Dionysius, his successor (c. 1440 - end - the beginning of the 16th century), the brightest star of the Moscow icon painting school, was specially known for his frescoes in the St. Therapontus Monastery in the northern Vologda Region - a sublime mystical cycle dedicated to the Nativity of Our Lady, heavenly patroness of Moscovy.

The 17th century was a watershed, and the emphasis was shifted to secular art, an inspired paean to earthly beaty. Court painting gained prominence at the time. The best artists of Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Tutayev, Rostov the Great, Suzdal, Novgorod and Pskov worked on royal orders for murals in gorgeous cathedrals and opulent mansions. They painted icons, portraits, book miniatures, flags and military leaders' tents. Despite the great number and excellence of Dutch, German and Polish masters at court service, their Russian colleagues were leading the way - Simon Ushakov, Iosif Vladimirov, Georgi Zinovyev, Fedor Zubov and others. Realistic principles were gradually taking shape in the Moscow school of painting, while the provinces were dominated by folk traditions, which formed and tastes of traders and craftsmen - the social strata who determined the prevalent trends in local sacred art.

Toward the end of the 17th century, Peter the Great's reign brought sweeping changes to all spheres of Russian life and art was no exception. New genres came from the West - historical allegory, still - life and landscape. Portraiture was the center of 18th century painting. Brilliant artists - Fedor Rokotov, Alexei Antropov, Ivan Argunov, Dmitri Levitsky and Vladimir Borovikovsky - excelled in subtle and graceful portraits of their contemporaries, mainly aristocrats. Mikhail Shibanov's genre canvas of a peasant betrothal was an axception in the high society art.

The first half of the 19th century was the formative period of genuine Russian art. Inspired by jubilant patriotism after the Napoleonic wars, Orest Kiprensky produced a sparkling Romantic portrait gallery of his contemporaries. The picture of the great poet, Alexander Pushkin, stands out among them. Landscape painting was spectacular for Fedor Alexeyev, who extolled the majestic vistas of St. Petersburg, and Sylvester Shchedrin, with his pearly, light - imbued Italian canvases. Russian landscapes attracted painters a few years later. Democratic trends were coming to portraiture with Vassili Tropinin, who left lyrical and psychologically penetrating pictures of traders, clerks and other commoners, and Alexei Venetsianov, from whose exquisite brush came decoratively embellished scenes of rural life. Pavel Fedotov raised genre painting to the height of art. A decade later, another superior master of the genre, Vassili Perov, appeared as a defender of the fallen and humiliated, with his celebrated "Troika", "A Tollgate Tavern" and "A Poor Man's Funeral."

The brilliant Carl Bryullov, pride of the academic school, came as a revelation to all of Europe with the grandiose tragedy of "The Last Day of Pompeii." Alexander Ivanov produced an even more impressive canvas, fruit of twenty years' ascetic seclusion - "The Appearance of  Christ to the People," one of the very foundations of Being.

Wise maturity came to Russian art in the latter half of the 19th century, its classical period which resulted in most of its greatest achievements. As it was in Europe, Russia was at that time dominated by realism, with its social analyses and attention to the issues of greatest public concern. Clashes were raging between the leading trends - realictic and academic. A turning point came to this conflict, which dominated artistic developments of the time, with the establishment of the Artists' Guild in the 1860s. The Guild openly confronted the Royal Academy of Arts. The Society of Itinerant Exhbitions, the famous Peredvizhniki, emerged in the next decade with a memorable genre, landscape and battle paintings and historical portraiture, which daringly posed the questions that society was obsessed with; what to believe in? What are we to fight for?

Ivan Kramskoi, who stood st the movement's cradle, came out with a sublime "Christ in the Wilderness," whose mystical symbolism embodied the self - minded intellectuals. Vassili Vereshchagin fought in the Balkan and Central Asian campaigns, and eternalized their haunting impressions on canvases which portrayed war the way it really was, with blood, dirt and infinite agony. Profound thoughts and feelings were undercurrents in the landscapes by Ivan Shishkin, Ivan Aivazovsky, Alaxei Savrasov and Isaac Levitan, his pupil of genius. Ilya Repin and Vassili Surikov, two of the foremost artists who overcame the limits of Peredvizhniki tenets, put inspired final touches on the Russian artistic evolution of the 19th century.

The Peredvizhniki faced an evident crisis toward the turn of the century. Russia was looking for a new style and the new artistic idiom focused on technique, line and color. Young guilds were coming into the foreground - The World of Arts, nostalgically drawn to the18th century,and The Blue Rose, with its mystical philosophy, as exemplified by Pavel Kuznetsov and Victor Borisov - Musatov. Neo - religious art (Victor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Nesterov, Mikhail Vrubel and Kuzma Petrov - Vodkin) was flourishing alongside the symbolical fantasies of Marc Chagall. Futurism, Neo - Primitivism, Rayism and other avant garde trends came up in arms against the classical heritage. Vassili Kandinsky, a Russian who had settled in Munich, pioneered non - figurative art.

The post - revolutionary 1920s preserved part of the daring artistic freedom of the stormy century's second decade, and Russia maintained its global leadership in avant garde painting. Neo - Primitivists AlexanderLarionov and Natalia Goncharova, Constructivist Vladimir Tatlllin, Suprematist Kazimir Malevich and Analyst Pavel Filonov established and promoted their trends through - out the world.

Academic formal principles reigned in Soviet art since  the 1930s, with Socialist Realism as the only authorized trend. Yet, stagnation never came thanks to eminently gifted artists aloof to political time - serving. Kuzma Petrov - Vodkin, Arkadi Rylov, Pavel Korin, Sergei Gerasimov, Robert Falk, Arkadi Plastov, Alexander Deineka, Georgi Nissky, Petr Konchalovsky, Yuri Pimenov and Evsei Moisseyenko, to name but few, bravely sought to portray the world in all its captivating diversity.

The long isolation of Soviet art from the amazing wealth of global culture was broken in 1957, during the "Thaw" time. Opened to the public were the latest artistic trends abroad and Russian achievements of the 1920s, however hard the regime might have tried to force them into olivion.

As Nikita Khrushchev confronted artists at a 1963 Manezh exhibition in honor of the Moscow Artists Union's 30th anniversary, he furiosly came down on abstract and other avant garde art. Even this attack was unable to kill Russia's new - found openness to the world. The New Art merely went underground - to shows in private homes, and to semi - secret circles where new non - conformist painting was budding. It came as a brave contrast to officially sponsored trends thoudhthe regime brutally repressed this art for its alleged anti - Soviet Union.

It is hard to describe the current situation in Russian art. We are now a free, permissive society as far as culture is concerned, but a yoke of proverty has replaced the ideological fetters. Bare survival is many artists' sole concern, and basic artistic events have moved from posh government - run exhibition halls to tiny private and cooperative galleries.

Today's Russian pictorials arts can be conventionally subdivided into two camps. The one brings together established trends from realism to pop art. For the most part, its works are unassuming and prettified to please the moneybags of primitive tastes. The other represents Conceptualism and some of the other latest shcools, and focuses on shows abroad.