Irina Zatulovskaya within the Volker Diehl Gallery | EUROtoday

She is at present one of the vital sought-after artists in Russia: the Moscow painter and poet Irina Zatulovskaya. Coming from a household of painters, Irina Zatulovskaya sketches symbolic photos in a naive method, ideally on poor supplies. The 71-year-old painter discovered her private model through the Perestroika interval. At that point she realized that objects marked by use, akin to rusty iron sheets, items of sandstone, fragments of wooden or material, have been higher suited to creating the essence of existence seen than “luxurious” primed canvas.

Her means of designing figures and issues in a childlike, archaic, diminished method, with just some strains and easy outlines, is sometimes called Arte Povera. The Russian lady’s visible world can also be dedicated to the custom of Christian icon and fresco portray in addition to avant-garde artwork. Irina Zatulovskaya has already exhibited in a number of European international locations. Now the Berlin gallery Volker Diehl is organizing her first retail present in Germany. All of the 27 works proven had beforehand been in Western Europe, the place the artist usually labored, most of them in Italy.

The works have been created within the noughties, however as a result of Irina Zatulovskaya’s model hardly modifications, in addition they give an impression of her present work. The portrait-format portrait of Saint Francis, painted with oil paint on sheet iron, as is utilized in Russia for roofing, will be thought of programmatic. The godly man, who can also be mentioned to have preached to the birds, feeds geese on his proper and left with each palms, whereas a pair of white doves holds a nimbus over his head (17,000 euros).

Irina Zatulovskaya, who transformed to the Orthodox religion underneath Soviet energy, cultivates the fresco model of northern Russian church buildings, which for her additionally captures the spirit of the Nineties, when the nonetheless poor Russian church was regenerating. Diehl presents a lot of lapidary, symbolic fresco photos within the colours brown-red and light-weight blue, that are basic to previous church wall portray, on inconsistently reduce sandstone: There is the reduce open pomegranate entitled “Song of Songs”, which visualizes the erotic depth of Solomonic poetry (3500) and the vines, which conjure up life pressure and the sacrificial dying of Christ (4500). A privately commissioned fresco for a Russian church by Irina Zatulovskaya was sadly destroyed in 2020 by the clergy who paid homage to opulent tutorial style.

The artist has traveled extensively in her nation, particularly the far north and Siberia, and captured the vitality of its inhabitants in photos. In the Khanty and Mansi area she met the legendary hunter and folklore singer Ulyana Pendychowa (1935 to 2021), who is alleged to have killed nineteen (in accordance with different sources sixteen) bears in her youth. Zatulovskaya depicts the already aged Pendychova, who lived with a a lot youthful man, by way of a pair of excessive Siberian Itchigi boots (13,000) valued by hunters.

Another large-format oil portray on sheet metallic reveals a feminine determine with a big, snow-white “fan of chants” (13,000). In the area with an excessive continental local weather, folks historically beat back the summer season mosquito plague with followers comprised of swan wings sewn onto plywood. A tribute to Sámi tradition is the blue reindeer, which carries a swaddled toddler at its aspect and serves as a dwelling heater (13,000).

Irina Zatulovskaya’s trademark is the piety with which she elevates on a regular basis objects into symbols of interpersonal heat. The sparsely white-speckled darkish and the densely speckled mild slice of bread (4500) characterize the salted or sugared slices with which hungry youngsters have been loved within the village, and the small rectangle with the Russian inscription “Matches as change” (5500) is paying homage to the scarcity-economic customized of handing out kopeck quantities within the type of matchboxes. Perhaps probably the most lovely work, the solemn procession of three ladies with magnificent mushrooms of their palms (19,500), illustrates how necessary such finds have been for his or her households.

Irina Zatulovskaya: Shadow of the long runGalerie Volker Diehl, Berlin, till February twenty eighth