KROPIVNITSKAYA Valentina Evgenievna

February 16, 1924 (Moscow) — December 23, 2008 (Paris)

Graphic artist

Valentina Kropivnitskaya attended the district art school, and studied under the guidance of her parents — E. L. Kropivnitsky and O. A. Potapova. Kropivnitskaya was a member of the group Lianozovo Circle, which gathered a lot of painters, writers and poets — nonconformists.

Kropivnitskaya was married to the artist Oscar Rabin. In this marriage she was independent in art from artistic quest of her husband.

Kropivnitskaya’s first artworks were realized firstly in literature, later — in painting. She wrote marvellous stories describing peculiar world, which had nothing in common with surrounding soviet reality. “Only in late two-three years she discovered visual arts, and, to the astonishment of everyone, she expressed herself in art definitely, with confidence, and in her original way. Both the technique of drawing and character of images and, above all, her peculiar original world appeared at the same time in her art style. This world amazed with its wholeness and completeness.

As contrasted to her father, who was universal painter, she had neither searches no hesitation. The choice was clear and definitive: technique — black chalk on paper; manner of drawing — clear outline, faint volume and touchiness; themes — fantastic creatures, half-animals or half-devils, with people’s psychology and behaviour. She painted Russian churches and izbas (peasant’s log huts), fantastic plants and these beings, so called ‘animals’, who were sitting, lying or praying in the landscape.

They were clever, kind and light-hearted; perhaps, they expressed the artist’s longing for more morally perfect world than the human one.” (L. Kropivnitsky, 1965).