Russkii inok: the spiritual landscape of Mikhail Nesterov

Abstract

The career of the Russian painter Mikhail Nesterov suggests the particular way in which Russian modernism was affected both by the unusually literary nature of the dominant pre-modern tendencies in Russian art and also by religio-political preoccupations, which were stronger in Russia than elsewhere in Europe. His experience also gives a fascinating example of how even a painter deeply hostile to the Russian Revolution of 1917 could regroup and continue his career.