In Russia, they were outraged by the recognition of Kuindzhi as a Ukrainian artist

The New York Metropolitan Museum on its website called Arkhip Kuindzhi (1841 – 1910) a Ukrainian artist – RIA Novosti drew attention to this. In its publication, the agency indicated that the artist’s hometown was Mariupol. Then the city was part of the Russian Empire, RIA emphasized and added that Kuindzhi “lived most of his life in St. Petersburg.”

Head of the Union of Artists of Russia Andrey Kovalchuk in a comment to RIA declaredwhich considers the position of the American Museum a provocation.

“These are such political insinuations, conjectures,” the quote is quoted. “The Russian Empire was, what can we talk about?”

The Kuindzhi family descended from the Azov Greeks, the childhood and adolescence of the future artist passed in Feodosia. At the age of 23, Kuindzhi came to St. Petersburg to enter the Academy of Arts. After 10 years, he again arrived in Mariupol, where he married an old lover. In the mid-1880s, the artist acquired a plot of land in the Crimea and settled there with his wife, subsequently traveling around the Caucasus, including living in St. Petersburg. In 1910, while on the peninsula, Kuindzhi fell ill with pneumonia – for treatment, his wife transported him to St. Petersburg, but the disease progressed rapidly and led to death. the artist was buried at the Smolensk Orthodox cemetery.