Postman from Russia

A mail carrier, mailman (US), postman/postwoman(UK), letter carrier (in American English and in New Zealand) or postie[citation needed] (in Australia, New Zealand) is an employee of the post office or postal service, who delivers mail and parcel post to residences and businesses. The term “mail carrier” came to be used as a gender-neutral substitute for “mailman” soon after women began performing the job. In the Royal Mail, the official name changed from "letter carrier" to "postman" in 1883, and "postwoman" has also been used for many years.



Postman

Fayum mummy portrait

Mummy portraits or Fayum mummy portraits (also Faiyum mummy portraits) is the modern term given to a type of realistic painted portraits on wooden boards attached to mummies from the Coptic period. They belong to the tradition of panel painting, one of the most highly regarded forms of art in the Classical world. In fact, the Fayum portraits are the only large body of art from that tradition to have survived.

Mummy portraits have been found across Egypt, but are most common in the Faiyum Basin, particularly from Hawara and Antinoopolis, hence the common name. "Faiyum Portraits" is generally thought of as a stylistic, rather than a geographic, description. While painted Cartonnage mummy cases date back to pharaonic times, the Faiyum mummy portraits were an innovation dating to the Coptic period on time of the Roman occupation of Egypt.

They date to the Roman period, from the late 1st century BC or the early 1st century AD onwards. It is not clear when their production ended, but recent research suggests the middle of the 3rd century. They are among the largest groups among the very few survivors of the highly prestigious panel painting tradition of the classical world, which was continued into Byzantine and Western traditions in the post-classical world, including the local tradition of Coptic iconography in Egypt.

The portraits covered the faces of bodies that were mummified for burial. Extant examples indicate that they were mounted into the bands of cloth that were used to wrap the bodies. Almost all have now been detached from the mummies. They usually depict a single person, showing the head, or head and upper chest, viewed frontally. In terms of artistic tradition, the images clearly derive more from Graeco-Roman traditions than Egyptian ones.

Two groups of portraits can be distinguished by technique: one of encaustic (wax) paintings, the other in tempera. The former are usually of higher quality.

About 900 mummy portraits are known at present. The majority were found in the necropoleis of Faiyum. Due to the hot dry Egyptian climate, the paintings are frequently very well preserved, often retaining their brilliant colours seemingly unfaded by time.

Fayum mummy portraits

Baba Yaga by Ivan Bilibin

Baba-Yaga is a witch-like character in Slavic folklore. She flies around on a giant pestle or broomstick, kidnaps (and presumably eats) small children, and lives in a hut that stands on chicken legs. In most Slavic folk tales, she is portrayed as an antagonist; however, some characters in other mythological folk stories have been known to seek her out for her wisdom, and she has been known on rare occasions to offer guidance to lost souls. According to Propp, she often fulfills the function of donor; that is, her role is in supplying the hero (sometimes unwillingly) with something necessary for the further quest.

Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin (16 August [O.S. 4 August] 1876 – 7 February 1942) was a 20th-century illustrator and stage designer who took part in the Mir iskusstva and contributed to the Ballets Russes. Throughout his career, he was inspired by Slavic folklore.

Ivan Bilibin was born in a suburb of St. Petersburg. He studied in 1898 at Anton Ažbe Art School in Munich, then under Ilya Repin in St. Peterburg. In 1902-1904 Bilibin travelled in the Russian North, where he became fascinated with old wooden architecture and Russian folklore. He published his findings in the monograph Folk Arts of the Russian North in 1904. Another influence on his art was traditional Japanese prints.

Bilibin gained renown in 1899, when he released his illustrations of Russian fairy tales. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he drew revolutionary cartoons. He was the designer for the 1909 première production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel. The October Revolution, however, proved alien to him. After brief stints in Cairo and Alexandria, he settled in Paris in 1925. There he took to decorating private mansions and Orthodox churches. He still longed for his homeland and, after decorating the Soviet Embassy in 1936, he returned to Soviet Russia. He delivered lectures in the Soviet Academy of Arts until 1941. Bilibin died during the Siege of Leningrad.

Ivan Bilibin
Baba Yaga

Sandro Botticelli. Card from Nataly

"Venus and the Graces Offering Gifts to a Young Girl", с. 1483
Fresque
Musee du Louvre, Paris - France

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli or Il Botticello "The Little Barrel"; (c. 1445 – May 17, 1510) was an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance (Quattrocento). Less than a hundred years later, this movement, under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, was characterized by Giorgio Vasari as a "golden age", a thought, suitably enough, he expressed at the head of his Vita of Botticelli. His posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting. Among his best known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera.

Botticelli

"Christmas"

The postcard with shot from Mikhail Aldashin's cartoon "Christmas"

Fyodor Khitruk's works exhibition

Fyodor Khitruk's (most famous Russian animator) exhibition taked place from January 21 to February 15th 2009. I wish to show you a postcards made from shots of his works.



Fyodor Savelyevich Khitruk is one of the most influential animators and animation directors in Russian animation. He was born in Tver.

Khitruk came to Moscow to study graphic design at the OGIS College for Applied Arts. He graduated in 1936 and started to work with Soyuzmultfilm in 1938 as an animator. From 1962 onwards, he worked as a director. His first film Story of A Crime was an immense success. Today, this film is seen as the beginning of a renaissance of Soviet animation after a two-decade-long life in the shadows of Socialist realism.

Diverging from the “naturalistic” Disney-like canons that were reigning in the 1950-60s in Soviet animated cartoons, he created his own style, which was laconic yet multi-level, non-trivial and vivid.

He is the director of outstanding “adult” films such as the social satire of bureaucrats Chelovek v ramke (Man in the Frame) (1966), the philosophic parable Ostrov (Island) (1973) about the loneliness of a man in modern society, the biographical film Junger Mann namens Engels - Ein Portrait in Briefen, Ein (1970), based on drawings and letters of young Engels, the parody Film, film, film (1968), and the anti-war film Lev i byk (A Lion and a Bull) (1984).

During his long career, he was awarded innumerable awards by all major film festivals. Today, Fyodor Khitruk lives in Moscow.

In April 1993, Khitruk and three other leading animators (Yuriy Norshteyn, Andrey Khrzhanovsky, and Eduard Nazarov) founded the Animation School and Studio (SHAR Studio) in Russia. The Russian Cinema Committee is among the share-holders of the studio.

In 2008, he released a two-volume book titled The Profession of Animation («Профессия – аниматор»).

Filmography

* Story of a Crime (История одного преступления, 1962)
* Toptyzhka (Топтыжка, 1964)
* Boniface's Holiday (Каникулы Бонифация, 1965)
* Man in the Frame (Человек в рамке, 1966)
* Othello 67 (Отелло-67, 1967)
* Film, Film, Film (Фильм, фильм, фильм, 1968)
* Winnie-the-Pooh (Винни-Пух, 1969)
* The Young Friedrich Engels (Юноша Фридрих Энгельс, 1970)
* Winnie-the-Pooh Goes on a Visit (Винни-Пух идет в гости, 1971)
* Winnie-the-Pooh and the Day of Concern (Винни-Пух и день забот, 1972)
* Island (Остров, 1973)
* I Grant You A Star (Дарю тебе звезду, 1974)
* Icarus and the Wise Men (Икар и мудрецы, 1976)
* Olympians (Олимпионики, 1982)
* Lion and Ox (Лев и бык, 1983)

Fyodor Khitruk

Postcard from Saint Petersburg, Russia

The University Embankment in Saint Petersburg. Sphinx at the landing pier near the Academy of Arts.

A sphinx is a zoomorphic mythological figure which is depicted as a recumbent lion with a human head. It has its origins in sculpted figures of Old Kingdom Egypt, to which the ancient Greeks applied their own name for a female monster, the "strangler", an archaic figure of Greek mythology. Similar creatures appear throughout South and South-East Asia, and the sphinx enjoyed a major revival in European decorative art from the Renaissance onwards.

Sphynx was brought to Saint-Petersburg by A. N. Muravyov who made a pilgrimage to Sacred lands in 1830. He didn't found a ship to Syria in Constantinople so he used ship to Egypt in spite of that travel to Egypt was not in his shedule. Muravyov found the first Sphynx just fetched from the Nile river waters and brought for the selling in Alexandria.

Info Wikipedia

Postcard from Eniseisk, Russia

Art card with reproduction van Gogh.
"Portrait of Doctor Felix Rey"
Oil on canvas
64.0 x 53.0 cm.
Arles: January, 1889
F 500, JH 1659
Moscow: Pushkin Museum

Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art.

Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide.

The central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.

Info from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh, http://www.vggallery.com/painting/p_0500.htm

"On Baikal". Postcard from Angarsk, Russia

Lake Baikal is in Southern Siberia in Russia, located between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, near the city of Irkutsk. It is also known as the "Blue Eye of Siberia". It contains more water than all the North American Great Lakes combined.

At 1,637 meters (5,371 ft), Lake Baikal is the deepest lake in the world and the largest freshwater lake in the world by volume. However, Lake Baikal contains less than one third the amount of water as the Caspian Sea which is the largest lake in the world. Like Lake Tanganyika, Lake Baikal was formed in an ancient rift valley and therefore is long and crescent-shaped with a surface area (31,494 km²), less than that of Lake Superior or Lake Victoria. Baikal is home to more than 1,700 species of plants and animals, two thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. At more than 25 million years old, it is the oldest lake in the world.

A Russian mini-submarine attempting to set a record for the deepest freshwater dive on July 29, 2008 was originally reported as being successful, but a correction later emerged that reported the MIR I failed to do so, reaching a depth of only 1,580 meters.

Info from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Baikal

Postcard from Tambov, Russia

Art card with reproduction Patricia Couton