"The XX century. St. Petersburg. Favorites. Maria Gorokhova. Lyudmila Koutsenko. Valentina Povarova"

The exhibition of three artists from St. Petersburg Maria Gorokhova, Valentina Povarova and Lyudmila Koutsenko whose work, based on the traditions of Russian avant-garde, has identified new trends in art of St. Petersburg of the late XX century. The exhibition presents about 100 works of painting and drawing.

Maria Gorokhova began her artistic career in the beginning of the ХХ century. In the 1910s received basic art education in art and craft workshops at Artist Encouragement Society (AES). From 1920 to 1927 worked in the workshops at AES. After transformation of the workshops to the Art and Industry College she graduated from the Faculty of book art and graphics as an artist-technologist. At the same time she studied painting under the guidance of Kazimir Malevich and Lev Yudin who became her husband.

Since the late 1920s up to 1967 she taught at several art schools for children, in the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers and in the Teacher Training Institute.

In her works Maria Gorokhova developed the ideas of Russian avant-garde of the early XX century.

Valentina Povarova - painter, graphic artist, teacher and author of articles about art. She graduated from the Repin St. Petersburg State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1960). Since the early 1960s up to the late 1980s she taught painting, drawing, chromatics at Leningrad Herzen State Pedagogical Institute, Leningrad Art School named after Valentin Serov and Vera Mukhina Leningrad Higher Industrial Arts School.

Valentina Povarova is an artist who has deserved recognition both among professionals and amateurs of art. After becoming acquainted with Pavel Kondratiev, Vladimir Sterligov and Vladimir Volkov in 1960 she absorbed and revised in her work the traditions of St. Petersburg avant-garde and contemporary Western European art. Giving them a new meaning she created a world of form and color, without repeating existing examples but designing new space. Paying attention to color as the primary component of art, Povarova studied for many years problems associated with the perception and use of color in the figurative arts.

Lyudmila Koutsenko in 1953 graduated from the Leningrad Art School named after Valentin Serov. The same year she enrolled to the Repin Leningrad Institutefor Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and then continued postgraduate studies.

From 1962 to 1986 she taught at the department of general arts in the Vera Mukhina Leningrad Higher Industrial Arts School. Evgeniya Magaril – a student of Mikhail Matyushin and Kazimir Malevich, taught her pictorial arts. In the late 1960s she actively communicated with Pavel Kondratiev whose work has had a significant influence on the formation of abstract thinking and creativity of the artist.

Nevertheless, early post-impressionist and surreal works and more abstract latter works of Lyudmila Koutsenko are distinguished by a creative personality.

A presentation of albums of Maria Gorokhova and Lyudmila Koutsenko will take place on 31 May, 2012 at 3:30 PM at the exhibition in the Rumyantsev Mansion.

Tickets: full- 120 rubles, student - 70 rubles.