Zinaida Serebriakova

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At the Dressing-Table, 1909

Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebriakova (née Lanceray) ^[1] (Russian: Зинаи́да Евге́ньевна Серебряко́ва) (December 10, 1884–September 19, 1967) was the first female Russian painter of distinction.

1 Biography
2 Notes
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Family

Zinaida Serebriakova was born on the estate of Neskuchnoye near Kharkov (now Ukraine) into one of the most refined and artistic families of Russia.

She belonged to the artistic family of Lanceray. Her grandfather Nikolay Leontyevich Benois was a famous architect, chairman of architect's society and member of Russian Academy of Science. Her uncle Alexandre Benois was a famous painter, founder of the Mir iskusstva art group. Her father, Yevgeny Nikolayevich Lanceray, was a well-known sculptor, and her mother, who was Alexandre Benois's sister, was good at drawing. One of Zinaida's brothers, Nikolay Yevgenyevich Lanceray, was a talented architect, and her other brother, Yevgeny Yevgenyevich Lanceray, had an important place in Russian and Soviet art as a master of monumental painting and graphic art. Russian-English actor and writer Peter Ustinov was also her relative.

[edit] Youth

Harvest, 1915

In 1900 she graduated from women's gymnasium and entered the art school founded by princess Tenisheva. She learned from Repin (since 1901) and from portrait artist Braz (1903–1905). In 1902–1903 she traveled to Italy. In 1905–1906 she studied at Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris.

In 1905, Zinaida Lanceray married her first cousin, son of Evgenyi's sister, student (later railroad engineer) Boris Serebriakov and took his surname.

[edit] Happy years

Ever since her youth Zinaida Serebriakova strove to express her love of the world and to show its beauty. Her earliest works—Country Girl (1906, Russian Museum) and Orchard in Bloom (1908, private collection)—speak eloquently of this search, and of her acute awareness of the beauty of the Russian land and its people. These works are etudes done from nature, and though she was young at the time, her extraordinary talent, confidence and boldness were apparent.

Broad public recognition came with Serebriakova's self-portrait At the Dressing-Table (1909, Tretyakov Gallery); first shown at a large exhibition mounted by the Union of Russian Artists in 1910. The self-portrait was followed by Girl Bathing (1911, Russian Museum), a portrait of Ye.K. Lanceray (1911, private collection), and a portrait of the artist's mother Yekaterina Lanceray (1912, Russian Museum)—mature works, strict in composition.

She joined the Mir iskusstva movement in 1911, but stood out from the other members of the group because of her preference for popular themes and because of the harmony, plasticity and generalized nature of her paintings.

In 1914–1917, Zinaida Serebriakova was in her prime. During these years she produced a series of pictures on the theme of Russian rural life, the work of the peasants and the Russian countryside which was so dear to her heart: Peasants (1914–1915, Russian Museum), Sleeping Peasant Girl (private collection).

The most important of these works was Bleaching Cloth (1917, Tretyakov Gallery) which revealed Zinaida Serebriakova's striking talent as a monumental artist. The figures of the peasant women, portrayed against the background of the sky, gain majesty and power by virtue of the low horizon.

When in 1916 Alexander Benois was commissioned to decorate the Kazan Railway Station (see) in Moscow, he invited Yevgeny Lanceray, Boris Kustodiev, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and Zinaida Serebriakova to help him. Serebriakova took on the theme of the Orient: India, Japan, Turkey, and Siam are represented allegorically in the form of beautiful women. At the same time she began compositions on subjects from classical mythology, but these remained unfinished.

[edit] Revolution

House of Cards, 1919

Zinaida met the October Revolution at her family estate of Neskuchnoye. Suddenly her whole life changed. In 1919 her husband Boris died of typhus, contracted in Bolshevik jails. She was left with her four children and sick mother without any income. Hunger. All reserves of Neskuchnoye were marauded. She had to stop oil painting for the less expensive techniques of coal and pencil. This was the time of her most tragic painting House of Cards showing all her four orphaned children.

She did not want to switch to the futurist style popular in earlier Soviet art, nor paint portraits of commissars, but she found some work at the Kharkov Archeological Museum, where she made pencil drawings of exhibits. In December 1920 she moved to Petrograd to her grandfather’s apartment. After the October Revolution inhabitants of private apartments were forced to share them with new inhabitants sent for podseleniye. Her daughter Tatiana entered the academy of ballet. She made then a serie of pastel on the Mariinsky theater.

[edit] Paris

"Lit By The Sun", 1928

In the autumn of 1924, Serebriakova went to Paris, having received a commission for a large decorative mural. On finishing this work she intended to return to Russia, where her mother and the four children remained. The youngest boy Alexandre and the youngest daughter Catherine came in Paris respectively in 1926 and 1928. She wanted to have the other ones, but her life resulted differently, and she was not able to return to Russia. As a result, she became separated from two of her beloved children, Evgenyi and Tatiana.

Zinaida Serebriakova traveled a great deal. In 1928 and 1930 she travels to Africa, visiting Morocco. Landscapes of Africa's north astonished her, she paints Atlas mountains, Arab women, Africans in ethnic clothes. She also paints a cycle devoted to Britannia's fishermen. The salient feature of her later landscapes and portraits is the artist's own personality—her love of beauty, whether in nature or in man. And yet, the most important thing was missing—the connection with what was near and dear to her. In 1947, she took French citizenship.

During Khruschev's Thaw, the Soviet Government allowed contact with her. In 1960, after 36 years of forced separation she was visited by her daughter Tatiana (Tata), who became an artist painting decors for the Moscow Art Theatre. In 1966, a large exhibition of Zinaida Serebriakova's works was mounted in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev. She instantly became very popular in Russia, her albums were selling by the millions and she was compared to Botticelli and Renoir.

On September 19, 1967, at age 82, Zinaida Serebriakova died in Paris. Most of her works are still in France, but she send about 200 in Russia for the exhibition.

[edit] Notes

^ Her last name is often spelled Serebryakova and her maiden name is sometimes spelled Lansere (Russian: Лансере). She usually signed her work Z. Serebriakova or in Cyrillic script. Her family called her by the nicknames Zika and Zina (Serebriakova 1987).

[edit] References

Rusakova, A. (2006). Zinaida Serebrjakova.: 1884-1967. M.: Iskusstvo-XXI vek. ISBN 598051032X. (Russian)
Source of bibliographic record (German) Cover image and description. (Russian)

Illustrated monograph on the creative development and life of Zinaida Serebriakova by St. Petersburg art critic A. A. Rusakova.

Serebriakova, Zinaida Evgenevna (1987). Zinaida Serebriakova : pisma, sovremenniki o khudozhnitse, compiled by V.N. Kniazeva, annotated by U.N. Podkopaeva, Moskva: Izobrazitelnoe iskusstvo. (Russian) [1]

Zinaida Serebryakova: letters and contemporary writings on the painter.