Taisia Afonina

Taisia Kirillovna Afonina

Born	(1913-05-13)May 13, 1913 Nikolaev, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	April 19, 1994(1994-04-19) (aged 80) Saint Petersburg, Russia
Nationality	Russian
Education	Repin Institute of Arts
Known for	Painting
Movement	realism

Taisia Kirillovna Afonina (Russian: Таи́сия Кири́лловна Афо́нина; May 13, 1913, Nikolaev, Russian Empire – April 19, 1994, Saint Petersburg, Russia) - Soviet, Russian painter and watercolorist, lived and worked in Leningrad, a member of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists (before 1992 - the Leningrad branch of Union of Artists of Russian Federation),^[1] regarded as one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad school of painting.^[2]

Biography

Taisia Kirillovna Afonina was born May 13, 1913 in the city Nikolaev, in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine), in the family of master Shipyard "Navel" (after October Revolution Shipyard named Marty).

At the Old Tuchkov Bridge. 1959

In 1931 Taisia Afonina graduated from nine-year school in city Taganrog, and came to Leningrad to obtain art education. In 1932-1936 she engaged first in the evening classes for working youth, then in the preparatory classes at the Russian Academy of Arts.

In 1936 after preparatory classes Afonina was adopted at the first course of Painting Department of the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where she studied of Mikhail Bernshtein, Victor Oreshnikov, Pavel Naumov.

In 1941 after the beginning the Great Patriotic war Taisia Afonina together with little son and mother evacuated first in city Ostashkov, then in Vyshny Volochyok, then in city Lugansk, Ukrain. In 1943, after the liberation of the German fascists Lugansk, Taisia Afonina involved in rebuilding the city, teaches drawing and painting in Lugansk Art school. In autumn 1943 with a group of artists she rides into city Krasnodon to draw local club before awarding medals to parents died young heroes - members of the underground anti-fascist Komsomol organization named ″Young Guard″. They fought against the Nazi in the occupied city Krasnodon (in the Ukrainian SSR), and them feat become known the whole country.

Still life with Pussy-Willows. 1964

Some later, in 1946, in the May edition of the newspaper of the Academy of Fine Arts "For the Socialist Realism" Taisa Afonina wrote: ″I saw the pit where they were dumped, the remnants of their bloody clothes, the prison where they were tortured. I talked to their mothers and girlfriends. I wanted to tell, to write about all this, of all their short heroic life″.^[3]

In 1946 Afonina graduated from the Repin Institute of Arts in Igor Grabar personal Art Studio of monumental painting. Her graduate work was a historical painting named "Girls of Donbass", dedicated to the memory and heroism members of Anti-Fascist underground.^[4]

After graduation Afonina continues to work in Lugansk and returned to Leningrad in 1952 only. It Lugansk Museum named Kliment Voroshilov acquired as early as 1943 the first three paintings by Taisia Afonina: "The Germans came", "Stealing in Germany", and "Meeting". Later her paintings purchased Art museums of Leningrad, Kostroma, Krasnodon, Staraya Ladoga, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

Her first participation in the Art exhibition was in 1940. Since the beginning of 1950s she was constantly involved in art exhibitions of Leningrad artists. She painted landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and genre compositions. She worked in oil painting and watercolors and was most famous as a master of landscape and still-life painting. In 1946 Taisia Afonina was admitted to the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists.^[5]

In the first years after graduation Taisia Afonin attracts military subjects and pathos revival. Later in 1950-60 she more work in genre of portrait and lyrical landscape. In the 1950s she visited Ukraine, Carpathians, Meshchersky locations, where she painted a lot of studies from the life. For her works typical method of tonal painting, the interest to transfer effect of lights and plain air, and subtle coloristic relations. Among her works are such paintings as "Foundry Conveyor" (1947), "Portrait of Kizilshtein-Mikhailova" (1955), "Windy Day"^[6] (1956), "Close to Ryazan"^[7] (1958), "Spring", "A Light-Blue Night", "After the Rain",^[8] "At the Old Tuchkov Bridge"^[9] (all 1959), "On the Zhdanovka River in Leningrad"^[10] (1960), "Chinese student"^[11] (1961), "Still-life with Pussy-Willows",^[12] "Portrait of poet Olga Bergholz", "Marinka",^[13] "Briar"^[14] (all 1964), "Portrait A. Grebenuk",^[15] "Portrait of an entomologist S. Keleynikova"^[16] (both 1975), "Portrait of a Korean woman Tamara"^[17] (1977), "Portrait of writer Nikolai Tikhonov"^[18] (1980), and others.

Taisia Kirillovna Afonina died on April 19, 1994, in Saint Petersburg at the eightieth year of life. Her paintings reside in Art museums and private collections in Russia,^[19] Finland, USA, Germane, England, France,^[20] and others.