Nikolay Polissky

Ivan Kramskoy, the architect whose pen was rather more accurate than his brush, wrote of the great Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin: “Shishkin is the milestone of the Russian landscape”. What he meant was that Russian landscape painting prior to Shishkin and after him were two completely different art forms. Before Shishkin the landscape was a respectable picture that hung above the desk in the study. After him it was an epic image of Russia, an object of national pride. Recalling this quotation, I could say that Nikolay Polissky is the milestone of Russian land art. Before Polissky land art in Russia was a series of experiments by fringe artists. But now, in his wake, it has become a matter of landscape festivals that gather crowds of people in their thousands. This is a fundamental shift in how modern art functions in Russia. And it is why I call him a milestone.

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