Creative heritage of Lev Alperovich (1874–1913): from realism toward symbolism

Abstract

The article presents Lev Alperovich, a little-known to general public Belarusian painter of the beginning of the 20th century, who was Ivan Trutnev’s student in Vilnius Drawing School and a student of Ilya Repin in the Emperor’s Arts Academy in St. Petersburg. The works of Lev Alperovich that survived after the World War II are kept in the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus. The analysis of the painter’s biography and creative heritage reveals a new vector which was gradually emerging in Minsk at the beginning of the 20th century, i.e remoteness from the academic late “peredvizhniki” realism and the ambition to find a niche in the evolving Russian modern style or the European Art Nouveau style and symbolism. Relatively sparse artistic heritage of Alperovich – single and group portraits, genrepainting, everyday life scenes and staffage landscapes – allows the author to single out this painter as a Belarusian painting phenomenon of the 20th century.