MINSK, 26 January (BelTA) – The exhibition of book illustrations titled as Wonderful Wild World: Animalistic Genre in Visual Arts has opened in the Fine Arts Reading Room of the National Library of Belarus. It will stay open until 4 February, BelTA learned from the National Library of Belarus.
For many centuries the diversity and beauty of animals, their amazing varieties and bizarre forms have inspired painters and architects, sculptors and jewelers. The exposition is built to the chronological principle from antiquity to the present, which enable us to trace the evolution of the image of the animal in the works of different eras and styles, in the traditions of the West and East. Visitors will see the reproductions of primitive cave paintings, the ancient Egyptian Sphinx and the god Anubis with the head of a wolf, an image of a sculpture of the famous Capitoline Wolf, the National Library said.
The exhibition highlights Renaissance animalistic images as Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci, Hare by Albrecht Durer, The Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel. The event attracts attention to the hunting scenes created by Peter Paul Rubens, Monkeys in the Kitchen by David Teniers the Younger, the sculpture Death of Adonis by Giuseppe Mazzuola, numerous images of horses and riders (works by Eugene Delacroix, Theodore Gericault, animalist George Stubbs). Camels, donkeys, giraffe of the Georgian primitive artist Niko Pirosmani do not leave anyone indifferent. The works of modern masters are also represented (installations by Damien Hurst, works of photo artists, etc.).
The exhibition displays reproductions of paintings by Russian painters, such as The Horsewoman by Karl Bryullov, Morning in a Pine Forest by Ivan Shishkin, Shearing of Sheep by Pavel Kuznetsov, Bathing of the Red Horse by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, images of sculptures by Peter Klodt, the works by the graphic artist and animal sculptor Vasily Vatagin, the caricatures by Victor Chizhikov, and also images of animals in architecture.
The exhibition also brings spotlight on the images of animals in the works of Belarusian artists Marc Chagall, Elena Los, Leonid Schemelev, Nikolay Seleshchuk, Anatoly Kontsub, Vladimir Akulov, sculptures by Vladimir Zhbanov, sculptures of horses by Sergey Bondarenko, mythological creatures by graphic artist Valery Slauka.
The exhibition also presents the manuals on how to draw domestic and wild animals, birds and insects and also colorful encyclopedias about rare and endangered species of animals a significant part of which is devoted to the fauna of Belarus.
