UVAROV STEPAN NIKITOVICH (SKITALEC) (1847-1936)
Painter and graphic artist. In 1884 he entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1886 he applied for admission to the Petrograd Imperial Academy. Before the revolution in Russia, he was a lecturer at the Ministry of Public Education. He traveled a lot around the country, so he was called a traveler painter and an ethnographer painter. Along with his surname, the nickname Wanderer is often used. He lectured on art and taught practical drawing classes.
After the October Revolution, he lived in Czechoslovakia, where he gained fame as an artist and propagandist of Russian art. He called himself the founder of a folk trend in painting and a “wandering apostle of practical ethics.” In the autumn of 1922, he opened the exhibition “People’s Mobile Temple of Russian Art” in a Prague tavern. After that, the traveling exhibition traveled to different cities of the country, Czechoslovak newspapers wrote about the exhibition several times. In 1930 he participated in the Great Exhibition of Russian Art in Belgrade.
In 1929 he published the collection Sloven. Anniversary edition for the millennium of Prince St. Vysheslav 929–1929” (Prague, 1929, in Russian and Czech, 90 illustrations and photographs) with a selection of texts on the history and culture of the Slavic countries, author’s photographs of graphic works and exhibitions, as well as letters of thanks. In 1930, he published his moralizing lecture “Where are we going? Beauty perishes, love perishes, without which there is no life” in the form of a brochure in Czech. According to the artist, by 1934 he had organized 28 exhibitions and 750 lectures.
