Zinaida Evgenievna Serebriakova
Portrait of a young girl, Marrakech, c. 1962
Pastel on paper
Private collection
Her earliest works, Country Girl (1906, Russian Museum) and Orchard in Bloom (1908, private collection), speak eloquently of her acute awareness of the beauty of the Russian land and its people. These works are études done from nature, and though she was young at the time, her extraordinary talent, confidence and boldness were apparent.
Zinaida Evgenievna Serebryakova
Self-portrait, c. 1920s
Tempera on paper
Private collection
The large, radiant eyes of Zinaida Serebryakova shine cheerfully and slyly. A smile lights up her face. Probably, the artist painted a picture and thought about her future fate. She is calm and easy at heart. There are many events, plans, travels, pleasant worries about the family ahead. On the head of Zinaida is an interesting headdress that looks like an oriental turban. A strand of hair escaped from under
The canvas is painted in light gray colors using water-soluble paints. Everything is shrouded in a mysterious haze and mystery. Every stroke and stroke is unique! More on this painting
Zinaida Serebriakova (1884–1967)
At the Dressing-Table, c. 1909
Oil on canvas
Height: 75 cm (29.5 in); Width: 65 cm (25.5 in)
Tretyakov Gallery
Zinaida Evgenievna portrayed herself on the canvas with talent and genius! The portrait breathes with purity and freshness of female harmony. The artist lovingly painted herself in front of the mirror behind the morning toilet. A beautiful, young woman, clasping a shock of thick, long reddish-brown hair with one hand, combs it with a comb. She sees her reflection in the mirror and admires it.
In front of her is a bedside table with female attributes: a jewelry box, a box for powder and blush, napkins, brooches, hairpins, beads, a bottle of perfume. There are long wax candles on the sides. More on this painting
Broad public recognition came with Serebriakova's self-portrait At the Dressing-Table (1909, Tretyakov Gallery) (See above), 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) (See below), a portrait of Ye.K. Lanceray (1911, private collection), and a portrait of the artist's mother Yekaterina Lanceray (1912, Russian Museum), already mature works, strict in composition.
Zinaida Evgenievna Serebryakova
Bather, c. 1911
Oil on canvas
98 × 89 cm
The Russian Museum
Serebryakova's sister Katya posed for her, in this painting, who, by the way, was very similar to the artist herself. After that, Serebryakova was carried away by the idea of creating a canvas depicting a Russian bath. More on this painting
SEREBRIAKOVA, ZINAIDA 1884-1967
Bathing Nude, c. 1927
Pastel and pencil on paper
47 by 62 cm.
Private collection
Serebriakova’s pastel Bathing Nude, which she executed in 1927, is one of the earliest in a series of portraits of a young, dreamy model who became the artist’s favourite “life model” between the end of the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s. In Serebriakova’s best works of this period, we time and again encounter this same, invariably pensive girl from a Parisian Russian family. More on this painting
Zinaida Serebriakova (1884–1967)
The bath-house (study), c. 1912)
Oil on canvas
Russian Museum
Zinaida Serebriakova (1884–1967)
The bath-house, c. 1913
Oil on canvas
Dimensions Height: 135 cm (53.1 in); Width: 174 cm (68.5 in)
Russian Museum
One of the models for the second, main version of the painting "Bath" was Vasilisa Dudchenko - a peasant woman from the village of Neskuchnoye, who for a number of years worked as a cook for the Lancere-Serebryakov family. In her memoirs, Dudchenko wrote: “I posed for her. I am standing there in the center, bent over, but my face is covered by a woman sitting with a basin”. The rest of the models were selected from among the girls who served as housekeepers in familiar families. Apparently, many of them were of peasant origin, and in general the village bath was meant - according to Alexei Savinov, this picture “was an essential step in bringing Serebryakova closer to the themes of the village and its people”. More on this painting
From 1914 to 1917, 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).
Whitening the canvas
Oil on canvas
175.5 x 142
Tretyakov Gallery
Life in Neskuchny, located between Kursk and Kharkov, gave the artist a lot of material for creativity. Those whom she painted were well known to her, she observed them from year to year. "Whitening the Canvas" was supposed to be part of an epic cycle, which included the picture "The Harvest" and the planned "Shearing of the Sheep". The simple labor process - bleaching the canvas - Serebryakova interprets as a ritual act. She shows the calm beauty of people and the world, which is facilitated by the picturesque and linear rhythm of the picture, the majesty of the women’s poses, the low horizon due to the composition. This is how a special silence is born, which is more appropriate in the temple than in the field. Time stood still, stopped. This day will last forever, like the endless movement of life. More on this painting
Zinaida Evgenievna Serebryakova
Harvest, c. 1915
142 x 177 cm
Oil on canvas
Odessa Art Museum
"The Harvest" was created before the October Revolution in the style of realism.
In the foreground of the picture is the gold of the fields and the vastness of the blue sky, against the background of which are depicted four peasant women resting after labor in the field. They got together, stand, sit, talk. Each of them is busy with their own business. She loved the Russian people very much, their sufferings and aspirations, strong spiritual strength and faith in a happy future.
Two of them stand looking at each other. One holds a rake with a bundle of ears under her arm. The other has a barrel of water over her shoulder. In hot weather, clean, spring water quenches their thirst. The third girl holds a jar of fresh milk in her hands. The fourth one cuts the bread. That's the whole peasant breakfast! More on this painting
The most important of these works was Bleaching Cloth (1917, Tretyakov Gallery) (See above), 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 in Moscow, he invited Yevgeny Lanceray, Boris Kustodiev, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, and 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.
At the outbreak of the October Revolution in 1917, Serebriakova was at her family estate of Neskuchnoye, and suddenly her whole life changed. In 1919, her husband Boris died of typhus. She was left without any income, responsible for her four children and her sick mother. All the reserves of Neskuchnoye had been plundered, so the family suffered from hunger. She had to give up oil painting in favour of the less expensive techniques of charcoal and pencil. This was the time of her most tragic painting, House of Cards (See below), which depicts their four fatherless children.
Zinaida Evgenievna Serebryakova
House of Cards, c. 1919
Oil on canvas
Russian Museum
The canvas depicts the four children of Z.E. Serebryakova, who are building a house of cards on the table. Children look thin, emaciated and tired. The October Revolution of 1919 left a harsh imprint on their personalities. Zinaida Evgenievna painted this work at a difficult time, when she lost her beloved spouse, her family estate and was left without a livelihood with an elderly mother and four children in her arms. A difficult life full of hardships and suffering did not break her. She found the strength to continue working and living. More on this painting
Zinaida Evgenievna Serebryakova
Self-portrait with daughters, c. 1921
Oil on canvas
90 x 62 cm
Rybinsk Museum-Reserve
The young artist unsurpassedly portrayed herself on the canvas, during a work break, with a brush in her hands, and her two daughters, Ekaterina and Tatiana. The girls happily approached their mother to be alone with her.
The girls are dressed in vests typical of the fashion of the past. They are school age, 10-12 years old. Zinaida Serebryakova is about 35. She looks young and attractive. The daughters look very similar to her, although they are different in character. Katerina is care and tenderness itself, Tatiana is strength and beauty. More on this painting
She did not want to switch to the futurist style popular in the art of the early Soviet period, nor paint portraits of commissars, but she found some work at the Kharkov Archaeological Museum, where she made pencil drawings of the exhibits. In December 1920, she moved to her grandfather’s apartment in Petrograd. After the October Revolution, inhabitants of private apartments were forced to share them with additional inhabitants, but Serebriakova was lucky – she was quartered with artists from the Moscow Art Theatre. Thus, Serebriakova's work during this period focuses on theatre life. Also around this time, Serebriakova's daughter, Tatiana, entered the academy of ballet, and Serebriakova created a series of pastels on the Mariinsky Theater.
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 the Soviet Union, where her mother and the four children remained. However, she was not able to return, and although she was able to bring her younger children, Alexandre and Catherine, to Paris in 1926 and 1928 respectively, she could not do the same for her two older children, Evgenyi and Tatiana, and did not see them again for many years.
Attributed to Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebryakova
Ballerinas
Oil on canvas
36 x 48 in
Private collection
SEREBRIAKOVA, ZINAIDA 1884-1967
Dressing Room of the Dancer Irene Baranova, c. 1933
Pastel on paper
45.5 by 60.5 cm.
Private collection
Irina Mikhailovna Baronova was a Russian ballerina and actress who was one of the Baby Ballerinas of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She created roles in Léonide Massine's Le Beau Danube (1924), Jeux d'enfants (1932), Les Présages (1933); and in Bronislava Nijinska's Les Cent Baisers (1935). More on Irina Mikhailovna Baronova
After this, Serebriakova traveled a great deal. In 1928 and 1930, she traveled to Africa, visiting Morocco. During a six-week trip to Morocco in December 1928, she created more than 130 portraits and cityscapes which she called “sketches,” drawn in haste as none of the locals would agree to pose, and only three landscapes for fear of straying too far from Marrakech. She was fascinated by the landscapes of northern Africa and painted the Atlas mountains, as well as Arab women and Africans in ethnic clothing. She also painted a cycle devoted to Breton fishermen.
Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebryakova
Street Scene in Marrakesh, c. 1932
Gouache on paper
48.5 by 64 cm
Private collection
Zinaida Evgenievna Serebriakova
Camel market, Marrakesh, c. 1928
Pastel on paper
Private collection
Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebryakova, 1884-1967
THREE FIGURES IN A DOORWAY, dated 1932
Pastel on paper
64 by 48.5cm, 25¼ by 19in.
Private collection
Zinaida Evgenievna Serebriakova, 1884 - 1967
Moroccan Girl and Infant, c. 1932
Pastel on paper
63 by 48cm, 24¾ by 19in.
Private collection
Her two trips to Morocco in 1928 and 1932 were some of the happiest and most productive periods of Zinaida Serebriakova’s career. The impression that the country made on her is evident in the superb body of work she produced there. She was not the first artist to leave France for North Africa and find inspiration in the light, colour and landscape of these lands but unlike the host of male artists and writers who had gone before her there is no suggestion of exoticism in her depictions of the people and landscape, only the sheer of joy of discovery. Her portraits of women and children are among the best she produced but with 'none of those brash dolls of the souq that Matisse called ‘odalisques'. More on this painting
Zinaida Evgenievna Serebriakova
Young Morrocan Playing the Rubab, c. 1928
Pastel and charcoal on paper
Private collection
Zinaida Evgenievna Serebriakova
Etude de femme Hadija (nu)/ Reclining nude, c. 1932
Pastel on paper
Private collection
The portraits and landscapes Serebriakova painted over the course of two trips to Morocco form a unique and exotic group of works; a nude from this trip however, is exceptionally rare. Both expeditions were funded by a Belgian businessman, the Baron de Brouwer, who had commissioned portraits of his family from her after seeing her work at the 1928 International Exhibition in Brussels. Over the course of that summer he pressed her to visit his extensive plantations in Morocco.
'As soon as you sit to draw the women walk away - Arabs don't wish to be drawn, so they immediately close up their shops or charge up to 10 or 20 francs for tea an hour! He (Brouwer) wants nude paintings of the lovely native women, but it's a fantasy hardly worth dreaming about - even in their veils which cover everything but their eyes nobody will pose for me. There is no question of a nude.' Forced by the strictures of the Koran to work at lightning speed she would often have less than half an hour to complete portraits, yet in Marrakesh, the final destination on the second trip, evidently she at last found a willing model. More on this painting
Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebryakova
MOROCCAN NUDE, c. 1928
Pastel on paper
60 by 45.5cm, 23 1/2 by 18in
Private collection
In 1947, Serebriakova at last took French citizenship, and it was not until Khruschev's Thaw that the Soviet Government allowed her to resume contact with her family in the Soviet Union. In 1960, after 36 years of forced separation, her older daughter, Tatiana, was finally allowed to visit her. At this time, Tatiana was also working as an artist, painting scenery for the Moscow Art Theatre.
Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebryakova
Nude, dated 1930
Pastel on paper
48 by 62.5cm
Private collection
Zinaida Evgenievna Serebriakova
Reclining Nude, c. 1930
Oil on canvas
Private collection
The artist’s daughter Katya was a frequent model for Serebriakova, one of Russia’s foremost painters of the female nude. The poise and self-assurance of the model in the present work is characteristic of her large-scale oils. Like the Venus of Urbino or Manet’s Olympia, she lies across the composition while gazing at the viewer with self-confidence. The exotic floral fabrics, combination of white and green cloth and brown foreground may also be references to Manet’s masterpiece. More on this painting
SEREBRIAKOVA, ZINAIDA 1884-1967
Nude, c. 1932
Oil on canvas
73 by 50 cm.
Private collection
The interpretation of the life model motif in this work conveys the poetics of the naked human body that the artist devoted herself to in the second decade of the 20th century. This period saw the appearance of Serebriakova’s first two versions of The Bathhouse (1912 and 1913) (See above), in addition to her sketches and studies for Bathing (1917). As was always the case with Serebriakova, the artistic image she created in Nude was distinguished by the harmony of its spiritual and physical principles and by its delicacy and lively grace.
The portrayal of the naked body occupied a central role in Serebriakova’s painting during the 1920s and 1930s. From her memoirs we know that her models were Russian girls, a number of whom married around 1934 and ceased to model, thereby forcing the artist to “close” the subject. She could not afford to pay professional life models. More on this painting
Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebryakova
Nude
Oil on canvas
28 ¾ x 23 3/8 in. 72.8 x 59.8 cm.
Private collection
SEREBRIAKOVA, ZINAIDA (1884-1967)
Sleeping Nude (Katya), c. 1934
Oil on canvas
65 by 80 cm.
Private collection
Here the artist deploys a distinctive freedom and fluidity in her development of a classic theme in world art – the depiction of a sleeping sitter. Taking up the imagery of the sleeping Venuses of the Venetian masters, the nymphs of Boucher and the bathers of Cabanel and Renoir, Serebriakova does not reduce her model to some anonymous heroine of ancient mythology, rather, it is the “stolen moment” that interests her, catching a young girl, languid and flushed from sleep, at her most natural and without artifice. It is notable that the model here was the artist’s 22 year-old daughter Katya, her favourite sitter since the 1920s. More on this painting
Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebryakova
NUDE READING, dated 1931
Pastel on paper
63 by 48.5cm, 24¾ by 19in.
Private collection
After Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebryakova
Reclining Nude, c. 1930
Oil on canvas
20 x 30 in.
Private collection
Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebryakova
STUDY OF A SLEEPING GIRL, c. 1923
Oil on canvas
70 by 98cm, 27 3/4 by 38 1/2 in
Private collection
Sleeping Girl is one of the last masterpieces of Serebriakova’s Russian period and can be seen as a prelude to the series of stunning nudes which she would go on to produce in France. More on this painting
Serebriakova's works were finally exhibited in the Soviet Union in 1966, in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, to great acclaim. Her albums sold by the millions, and she was compared to Botticelli and Renoir. Serebriakova rejoiced at success in her homeland. However, although she sent about 200 of her works to be shown in the Soviet Union, the bulk of her work remains in France today.
Serebriakova died after a brain hemorrhage in Paris on 19 September 1967, at the age of 82. She is buried in Paris, at the Russian cemetery at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. More on Zinaida Serebriakova
Please visit my other blogs: Art
Collector, Mythology, Marine
Art, Portrait of a Lady, The
Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The
Canals of Venice, Middle
East Artists, 365
Saints and 365 Days, also visit my Boards on Pinterest
Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others.
Some Images may be subject to copyright
I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless
it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell
me.
I do not sell art, art prints, framed posters or reproductions. Ads are
shown only to compensate the hosting expenses.
If you enjoyed this post, please share with friends and family.
Thank you for visiting my blog and also for liking its posts and pages.
Please note that the content of this post primarily consists of articles
available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.
No comments:
Post a Comment