Ilya Yefimovich Repin (5 August [O.S.

24 July] 1844, Chuguyev, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire – 29 September 1930, Kuokkala, Viipuri Province, Finland) is a leading Russian painter and sculptor of the Peredvizhniki artistic school.

An important part of his work is dedicated to his native country, Ukraine.

His realistic works often express great psychological depth and expose the tensions within the existing social order.

Beginning in the late 1920s, detailed works on him are published in the Soviet Union, where a Repin cult develops about a decade later.

He is held up as a model "progressive" and "realist" to be imitated by "Socialist Realist" artists in the USSR.