Fedot Vasilievich Sychkov

Born into peasant family in Kochelaevo, Mordovia, Fedot Sychkov began his career with no money and little chance of success. He traveled to St. Petersburg at the age of twelve, hoping to gain admission to the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts, but he found the entrance exams too difficult. He was persistent, however, taking classes and attempting to educate himself, and years later he passed the exams successfully. His academic training under Ilya Repin informed his later oeuvre, and when he returned to Mordovia in 1900 he painted mostly children and peasants in his village. His paintings are thus not fictional representations of national identity; rather, they are real depictions of the traditional Russian peasant in scenes of the everyday.