In Russia, 3D Animation Is Bringing a Folk Artist’s Paintings to Life

With help from neural tech and student coders, a forgotten visionary gets a digital reboot.

In a quiet corner of Kostroma, an experimental art-meets-tech project is reanimating the fantastical worlds of Yefim Chestnyakov, a Russian painter, folklorist, and mystic whose early 20th-century canvases straddle the line between utopia and hallucination.

Launched by the Kostroma Museum-Reserve, the initiative—called “Let’s Sit and Rattle”—aims to digitally reinterpret ten of Chestnyakov’s works using 3D animation and AI voice synthesis. The goal: let the characters in his whimsical village scenes literally speak, using lines pulled from the artist’s own fairy tales and stories.

Among the paintings slated for transformation are “Festive Procession with Song: Kolyada,” “The Wedding,” and “The City of Universal Prosperity”. The visual style will stay true to Chestnyakov’s dreamlike palette, while the movement and dialogue aim to make the work more accessible to today’s audiences.

The real challenge? Walking the line between preservation and reinterpretation. The team, including 100 students from the Kostroma State University School of Information Technology, is working to ensure the digital layer enhances rather than dilutes the emotional and philosophical core of the originals.

This isn’t Russia’s first fusion of AI and heritage. Similar projects have used neural networks to create interactive portraits of classical composers—most notably Pyotr Tchaikovsky, who now “speaks” to museum-goers about his own symphonies. Other experiments allow virtual time travelers to explore 21st-century Moscow alongside digitized historical figures.

It’s part cultural revival, part augmented reality—and part reminder that even analog geniuses deserve a digital afterlife.