 Original founding members included Pavel Radimov (the last chairman of Peredvizhniki movement), Sergey Malyutin, Yevgeny Katzman, Pyotr Shukhmin and other realist painters, who already established themselves in artistic world before the Russian Revolution of 1917.The group formed within the Peredvizhniki movement, that held their last, 47th, public exhibition in 1922, and clearly placed itself in opposition to avant-garde art.They claimed that their art style was meant to capture "revolutionary impulse of this great moment of history" without "insult[ing] the revolution in the eyes of the international proletariat."