Painting

Painting is the most popular and famous type of fine art in European culture, the works of which are created using paints applied to any solid surface. The main expressive means of painting is color.

Painting is a type of art richest in visual means: it is not only color, or rather the relationship of chromatic tones, but also achromatic tonal relationships (contrasts and nuances of light and dark), chiaroscuro gradations, graphic means (line, silhouette), the texture of the paint layer. The art of painting, due to such a variety of means, is closely connected with the picturesqueness, the clarity of the image, which gives the most complete idea of the form and space of the depicted. This explains the popularity of this art form. Therefore, painting naturally takes first place in the academic triad of "fine" arts: "painting, sculpture, architecture".

In the traditional history of art, several main varieties of painting are distinguished: easel painting (that is, paintings), monumental and decorative painting (frescoes, etc.), theatrical and decorative painting, digital images, miniature. Sometimes icon painting is considered as a separate variety.

Color (polychrome) images created using transparent (transparent) watercolors and even opaque gouache or tempera are not classified as painting, but as graphics, since the main pictorial medium (and not just material) in these cases remains the white background of paper. Color images in sanguine or pastel, even if they completely cover the background, likening it to an imaginary space, are also referred to as graphic art, but for a different reason - to the method and technique of drawing.

The concept of a genre was formed in the visual arts relatively recently, but already in the rock carvings and the art of the Ancient World, the forerunners of certain genres appear.

1. Religious . painting

2. A portrait is an image of a person or a group of people who exist or have existed in reality. “The portrait depicts the external appearance (and through it the inner world) of a concrete, real person who existed in the past or exists in the present”. Among the sub-genres of the portrait are ceremonial, chamber, group, allegorical, as well as self-portraits.

3. History painting is a genre of painting originating in the Renaissance, dedicated to real historical events and characters, or mythological and biblical subjects.

4. Battle painting is a genre of fine art that is closely connected with the historical genre. Battle canvases are dedicated to the themes of war and military life.

5. Mythological painting is a genre that includes works dedicated to the heroes and events of the myths of ancient peoples.

6. Landscape is a genre of painting, in which the main subject of the image is the primordial, or to one degree or another, nature transformed by man.

7. Interior - the image of a closed space, the interior of the building.

8. Still life - the image of inanimate objects in the visual arts.

9. Genre painting is part of the everyday genre in the visual arts. Everyday scenes from antiquity were the subject of painting, found in the murals of the Ancient East and ancient vase painting, however, as a separate genre, genre painting took shape only in the 14th-15th centuries.

10. Animal painting - canvases, the main plot for which is the image of animals.

11. Abstract painting is painting, the main plot for which is the image of the world of abstraction.

In addition to pure genres, there are paintings that combine various genre elements - for example, landscape and everyday genre, group portrait and historical painting. Battle painting usually includes elements of other genres, from landscape and animalistic to still life.

The Most Famous Art Museums Around the World:

• The Uffizi Gallery (Florence, Italy)
• Mauritshuis (The Hague, Netherlands)
• The British Museum (London, United Kingdom)
• Winter Palace (Saint Petersburg, Russia)
• Hermitage Museum (Saint Petersburg, Russia)
• The Louvre Museum (Paris, France)
• Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam, Holland)
• Museo del Prado (Madrid, Spain)
• National Gallery (London, United Kingdom)
• Smithsonian Institution (Maryland, United States)
• Victoria and Albert Museum (London, United Kingdom)
• Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, United States)
• The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, United States)
• Pergamon Museum (Berlin, Germany)
• The Museum of Modern Art (New York, United States)
• National Gallery of Art (Washington DC, United States)
• Gold Museum (Bogota, Colombia)
• National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico City, Mexico)
• The Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
• The Musée d’Orsay (Paris, France)
• The Reina Sofia (Madrid, Spain)
• Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Wellington, New Zealand)
• Tate Modern (London, United Kingdom)
• Towada Art Center (Towada, Japan)
• Acropolis Museum (Athens, Greece)