Zinaida Serebriakova: Google Doodle celebrates Russian painter’s 136th birthday

Google Doodle celebrates the 136th birthday of Russian (later French) painter Zinaida Serebriakova (Зинаи́да Серебряко́ва) on December 10, 2020.

Who was Zinaida Serebriakova (Зинаи́да Серебряко́ва)?

Zinaida Serebriakova was born on December 10, 1884, on the estate of Neskuchnoye close to Kharkov (presently Kharkiv, Ukraine) in the Russian Empire. was prestigious for her joyful realist style and flourished when female painters were seldom perceived.

Zinaida Serebriakova (Зинаи́да Серебряко́ва) belonged to the most refined and artistic Benois family. In 1900, she graduated from a women’s gymnasium (identical to grammar school or secondary school) and entered the art school established by Princess Maria Tenisheva.

Throughout the next years, she studied the paintings of the Venetian experts in Italy and the French impressionists in Paris and apprenticed under the famous Russian artist Osip Braz.

Zinaida Serebriakova studied under Repin in 1901, and under picture artist Osip Braz somewhere in the range of 1903 and 1905. In 1902–1903 she spent time in Italy, and from 1905 to 1906 she learned at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.

In 1905, Zinaida Serebriakova wedded her first cousin, Boris Serebriakov, the child of Evgenyi’s sister, and took his surname.

From her youth onwards, Zinaida Serebriakova strove to express her love of the world and to show its beauty. Her soonest works, Country Girl (1906, Russian Museum) and Orchard in Bloom (1908, private collection), talk eloquently of this search, and her intense awareness of the beauty of the Russian land and its people.

These works are études done from nature, and however Zinaida Serebriakova was youthful at that point, her extraordinary talent, confidence, and intensity were evident. Expansive public attention accompanied Serebriakova’s “Self-Portrait at the Dressing Table” (1909, Tretyakov Gallery), first appeared at an enormous exhibition mounted by the Union of Russian Artists in 1910.

In 1911, Zinaida Serebriakova joined the Russian art movement known as the World of Art and emphasized the group’s attention on national art and stylistic beauty in her work, remembering for her often rosy portrayals of laborer life.

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

The most significant of these works was Bleaching Cloth (1917, Tretyakov Gallery), which uncovered Zinaida Serebriakova’s striking ability as a monumental artist.

At the flare-up of the October Revolution in 1917, Serebriakova was at her family estate of Neskuchnoye, and suddenly her entire life changed. In 1919 her husband Boris passed on typhus contracted in Bolshevik jails. She was left with no pay, liable for her four children and her sick mother.

Zinaida Serebriakova (Зинаи́да Серебряко́ва) would not like to change to the futurist style famous in the art of the early Soviet period, nor paint representations of commissars, however, she discovered some work at the Kharkov Archeological Museum, where she made pencil drawings of the exhibits.

In December 1920, Zinaida Serebriakova moved to her grandfather’s apartment in Petrograd. After the October Revolution, occupants of private apartments were forced to share them with extra inhabitants, however, Serebriakova was fortunate – she was quartered with artists from the Moscow Art Theater.

Hence, Serebriakova’s work during this period focuses on theater life. Additionally, around this time, Serebriakova’s daughter, Tatiana, entered the academy of ballet, and Serebriakova made a series of pastels on the Mariinsky Theater.

In the autumn of 1924, Zinaida Serebriakova went to Paris, having gotten a commission for an enormous decorative mural. After a move back to Paris in 1924, Serebriakova kept on paint landscapes and representations all through the leftover decades of her career.

On completing this work, Zinaida Serebriakova planned to return to the Soviet Union, where her mother and the four children remained. Nonetheless, she couldn’t return, and even though she had the option to bring her more youthful children, Alexandre and Catherine, to Paris in 1926 and 1928 respectively, she was unable to do likewise for her two older children, Evgenyi and Tatiana, and didn’t see them again for many years.

After this, Zinaida Serebriakova traveled an incredible deal. In 1928 and 1930 she made a trip to Africa, visiting Morocco. She was intrigued by the landscapes of northern Africa and painted the Atlas mountains, as well as Arab women and Africans in ethnic dress.

She likewise painted a cycle committed to Breton fishermen. The salient feature of her later landscapes and representations is the artist’s own personality — her love of beauty, regardless of whether in nature or individuals.

In 1947, Zinaida Serebriakova finally took French citizenship, and it was not until Khruschev’s Thaw that the Soviet Government permitted her to continue contact with her family in the Soviet Union.

In 1965, a retrospective exhibition respected Zinaida Serebriakova’s work in Moscow and Kiev and the next year in Leningrad and Novosibirsk.

Zinaida Serebriakova’s works were at long last exhibited in the Soviet Union in 1966, in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, to incredible approval. Her albums were sold by the millions, and she was contrasted with Botticelli and Renoir. Notwithstanding, even though she sent around 200 of her attempts to have appeared in the Soviet Union, the majority of her work stays in France today.

Zinaida Serebriakova (Зинаи́да Серебряко́ва) died in Paris on 19 September 1967, at 82 years old. She is buried in Paris, at the Russian cemetery at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.

On December 10, 2020, Google observes Zinaida Serebriakova’s 136th Birthday with Google Doodle.