The art session of the Innopraktika School was over in Saint Petersburg. It was held already for the fifth time at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts in Painting and Sculpture. For three weeks its participants created 23 creative works - paintings, sculptures, an art-object - on the assigned subject ‘Creativity unites’. All final works can be seen at a large exhibition in the Italian Hall of the Academy of Fine Arts.

This year a large number of applications was received for participation in the art session: 189 applicants from 26 countries expressed their desire to get acquainted with Russian culture and traditions. Following the results of the selection process, 16 young foreign creators from Vietnam, India, Uganda, Senegal, Namibia, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina were invited to take classes at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. Four participants from Abkhazia and the Lugansk State Academy of Culture and Arts named after Mikhail Matusovsky joined them.

During three weeks they familiarized themselves with Russian artistic traditions, exchanged experience, and visited significant cultural sights of Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad region.

The curriculum of the art session included a lecture by Semen Ilyich Mikhailovsky, rector of the Academy of Fine Arts, classes on anatomy and sketching, master classes on portraits and sketches, and sculpture by professors: Ilya Zorkin, Artem Tikhonov, Mikhail Tishakov, Mikhail Molyakov and Vladimir Brodarsky.

The students visited the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Mariinsky Theater, the Memorial Workshop of M.K. Anikushin, Peterhof and Tsarskoye Selo. They familiarized themselves with the architectural features of the country at the Grand Layout Russia exhibition.

Participants of the choreographic session of the Innopraktika School also visited the Academy of Fine Arts. They met the young creators and invited them to the Boris Eifman Dance Academy. After that joint walks, movie screenings, excursion to the Peter and Paul Fortress and a great opportunity to enjoy the view of bridges from the ship's board were waiting for the participants. Over the course of the class, amazing friendship developed between participants from Abkhazia and Vietnam. Many people remembered the picnic and acquaintance with Russian cuisine: many of them discovered okroshka, stuffed cabbage, and gingerbread for the first time. Special admiration among the students caused a visit to the Museum-Estate of I.E. Repin Penaty: they were surprised by the workshop, made of wood, "which every artist dreams of."

"The current art session proved once again that the language of art is understood by everyone. Remarkably, an artist from Brazil, who is a student of Rafael Bteshe, a participant in our very first session, was among the participants. This is a continuity that can also be traced in the fact that several current students have become applicants to the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. As for the works produced, it is difficult to argue about their compliance with academic standards. Each of them is a reflection of the national identity and cultural features of the country that a particular creator represents," notes Aleksey Lebedev, supervisor of the Innopraktika School.

For example, an artist from Uganda created an art object based on wood in addition to a painting. Some of the participants approached the creation of paintings through the prism of how they saw our country and Saint-Petersburg. The works of Melisa Calabria Belen from Argentina, Le Ha Linh from Vietnam and Sujyot Suhas Parkhe from India cannot be overlooked. They reflect the main motives of the students: expressing the common values of the whole humankind, getting to know new cultures, and making connections between cultures and peoples, respectively.

The exhibition of the final works of the participants of the fifth art session of the Innopraktika School will be presented in the Italian Hall of the Academy of Fine Arts.