Occupation Painter Name Kyriak Kostandi | Role Painter | |
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Kiriak Kostantinovich Kostandi (Ukrainian: Киріак Костянтинович Костанді; Russian: Кириак Константинович Костанди; October 3 [O.S. September 21] 1852 – 31 October 1921) was a prominent Ukrainian painter and an art scholar. A member of the Russian realist artistic movement Peredvizhniki (lit. Itinerants) he also authored several Impressionist paintings.
Most of Kostandi's life and work is connected with the city of Odessa (now in Ukraine) in the southwest of the Russian Empire where he lived most of his life. His paintings are displayed in the museums of Odessa, Kiev, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Life
Kostandi was born in 1852 in Dofinovka, close to the city of Odessa, in a family of Greek descent. Kostandi graduated from the Odessa Drawing School in 1874, and then the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1882. He then returned to Odessa, where he painted and taught at the drawing school. In 1897 he joined the Peredvizhniki. Kostandi played an important part in introducing the ideology of the Peredvizhniki to Ukraine. He was one of the founders of the Society of South Russian Artists, serving as the society's president from 1902 to 1920. In 1907 he was elected a full member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. From 1917 he served as director of the Odessa City Museum.
Kostandi was a strict realist, and was opposed to every formalist trend. He was mainly a genre painter, but also did some landscape painting and portrait painting. After his death, his followers started the Kostandi Society of Artists .