Ilya Yefimovich Repin ( 5 August 1844 – 29 September 1930) was 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 expressed great psychological depth and exposed the tensions within the existing social order. Beginning in the late 1920s, detailed works on him were published in the Soviet Union, where a Repin cult developed about a decade later. He was held up as a model "progressive" and "realist" to be imitated by "Socialist Realist" artists in the USSR. Bolotnaya Square is a square in the center of Moscow, in Yakimanka District, south of the Moscow Kremlin, between the Moskva River (north) and the Vodootvodny Canal (south). The square had the name of Repin Square, commemorating Russian artist Ilya Repin, between 1962 and 1994. The square is built as a pedestrian open space. In 1958, the monument to Ilya Repin was built in the center of the square. In 1962, the square was renamed Repin Square. In 1994, together with other streets and squares of the historical center of Moscow, it was renamed back to Bolotnaya Square
On their Wedding Day, the bride and groom attach a padlock, engraved with their names and wedding date on "the Padlock Tree" on the Luzhkov Bridge and then throw the keys over the brides shoulder into the Vodootvodny Canal. The representation is; just as the padlock is locked and bonded with the bridge froever, so are the bonds of their marriage. Signs of fidelity and a long life.
