he monumental building on the Neva embankment was built according to the project of J.B.Vallen and A.F.Kokorinov. Its plan is a square with a large yard in the centre and four corner yards with stretched around the periphery arched corridors, a large hall and grand stairs decorated with sculptures. Museum, church, library, studios and professors' flats are united in one architectural ensemble that makes the Academy of Arts a unique centre of Russian culture. In our mind the Academy associates with Saint Petersburg, with granite embankment of Vassilevsky Island, with a famous building near Egyptian sphinxes.

     uring first years a strictly consecutive system of education was formed and then was perfected. Usually started with drawing- in the beginning it was a simple drawing without a ruler, then went on to copying masterpieces (engraving from pictures of the greatest artists), plaster antique models, and in the end - a nude. Future artists not only copied masterpieces, but drew a nude. Sculptor modeled a nude. Architects studied orders, did measurement, washed off architectural elements, designed small decorative and park constructions and then large volume-spatial compositions.

Along with it plastic anatomy, architectural drawing, general subjects, foreign languages were taught. They completed education designing rather complete composition work according to chosen specialty. The most talented graduates whose works got gold medal of 1st and 2nd value were sent to the trip to perfect their skills (as a rule to Italy and France).

    he history of the Academy is closely connected with the history of Russian Fine Arts. There were periods of real flight, when the Academy was the only authority arbiter in the field of artistic policy and the time of less obvious influence on the development of Russian artists. However, along all its history Saint Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts has been the largest artistic school in the world that train outstanding masters of Fine Arts. It's remarkable that students often worked with the teachers who as a rule were greatest artists of their time. They witnessed he creative work of the teachers and watched the whole process of artistic masterpiece creation, and sometimes they took part in the process helping to the master. All gave positive results, because during the process of studying, there is nothing more effective than just watching experienced artist work, studying all stages.

Many famous Russian artists studied in the Academy and gained professional skills that let them stay at the head of artistic life. Graduates from Academy brought fame to Russian Art creating images of fundamental/deep thoughts poetizing beauty of a Russian man and nobility of his aspiration.

In the Academy studied A.P.Losenco, F.S.Rokotov, D.G.Levitsky, O.A.Kiprensky, V.A.Tropinin, S.F.Stchedrin, K.P.Brulov, A.A.Ivanov, P.A.Fedotov, I.N.Kramskoy, V.I.Surikov, V.A.Serov, I.E.Repin, I.I.Brodsky, I.E.Grabar, M.B.Grekov,
architects - V.I.Bazhenov, I.E.Starov, A.N.Voronihin, A.D.Zaharov, V.P.Stasov, sculptors - F.I.Shubin, M.I.Kozlovsky, I.P.Mar-tos, S.S.Pimenov, V.I.Demut- Malinovsky, P.K.Klodt, M.M.Antokolsky and others.
Here studied and graduated the outstanding Ukraine poet and artist T.G.Shevchenco.

    he imposing building on the embankment has served to Russia for many years. It has never changed its main destination - to train young artists. From the very beginning strictly methodic system was formed. The system was changed and perfected, reflecting new needs of the moment.

Nowadays the main principle is succession of the best Russian and world traditions. More than 700 full-time and 500 students of correspondence course from Russia and foreign countries study at 5 faculties.

Basing on creative experience, developing and improving it according to the needs of reality, the Academy looks further ahead not forgetting about social role of an artist and his duty to serve his country.

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(c) Repin State Academic Institute of Painting Sculpture and Achitecture, 2004
(c) Designed by Julia Lemnitskaya: jl_design@front.ru