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RUSSIAN WOMEN PAINTERS OF THE SOVIET ERA
28 September 2018 @ 00:00
A tribute to four Second post-World War women painters of the Schools of Moscow and St. Petersburg, whose training and artistic career took place entirely in the Soviet era: Marina Uspenskaya (Moscow, 1925 – 2007), Nadezhda Vorobieva (Moscow, 1924 – 2011), Klara Vlasova (Moscow, 1926), Maya Kopitzeva (Gagra, Georgia, 1924 – St. Petersburg, 2005) and Olga Bogaevskaja (St. Petersburg, 1916 – 2000).
The three Muscovites, same age, attend the Surikov Institute, but immediately take different paths. Marina Uspenskaya, versatile artist, attends the graphics department and the drawing will be her great passion. In fact, during her long career, she created illustrations for about 200 children’s books published in the Soviet Union and abroad. She expertly uses watercolor, ink and tempera to transfer to the paper, with a skillful and precise touch, snapshots of daily life related to childhood. Some of the works in exhibition are small studies with delicate tones for illustrated books that, in the effervescent freshness of the subjects (childhood games, children who confabulate, etc.), reveal great technical skills at the service of expressiveness. Uspenskaya’s creativity also extends to other subjects, including original gouaches of colorful metropolitan landscapes and young bathers. Even Nadezhda Vorobieva’s oils are characterised by the soothing simplicity of what they portray, as well as the lively skating lessons painted by Klara Vlasova.
The St. Petersburg School is represented by two of its main exponents, whose different personalities and training experiences lead to a great artistic production. Maya Kopitzeva, a brilliant post-impressionist colorist, creates paradoxically “very vivid” still lifes, because they do not fit into the narrow frames of the genre. Never scenic, but poetically powerful, they evoke, despite the compositional strictness hidden behind an apparent randomness, a rare sensibility. The spectator is impressed by the overall originality of the composition and by the combination of strong colors, reinforced by thick dynamic brushstrokes. More thoughtful, Olga Bogaevskaja identifies her aesthetic ideal in the poetry of everyday life. She is skilled and confident in all painting techniques: watercolors, with transparencies and evocative nuances, pastels and oils, solved by a synthetic brushstroke.
