Person of the week: Nina Shapkina-Корчуганова — favorite student of Andrei Vasnetsov
ARTinvestment.RU   30 марта 2020

"When I learned that I would be an artist? — do Not know. I think the feeling that I will be, I've always had" (Nina Shapkina-Корчуганова)

On the personality of Nina Shapkina-Корчугановой, her worldview and artistic credo is largely influenced by dramatic events and facts of her biography. Her grandparents on both lines were dispossessed and deported from Russia. She was born in Turkmenistan, but Turkmenistan does not remember, because the parents lived there a very short time.

From an early age Nina Shapkina had the independence of mind and independence in decision-making: "no I've never been sent for life. I know who am I and what should I do",@now;— told the artist (see Women-художники Moscow. A career in the arts. M. : Decorative art. 2005. CIT. by: artpanorama.su).

after finishing school she entered the Moscow polygraphic Institute (1974-1981) and studied on the course, Andrey V. Vasnetsov, whose views differed uncompromising rigor and integrity. The coach singled out the work of Shapkino Nina, called her a promising artist neorealist direction and compared with the "modernized Daumier", but only "a few kubatsirana".

the Artistic life 1980-х years have been a tumultuous, controversial and difficult. Shapkina did not accept in it active participation, kept apart, in searching of self. He painted. From a dead stop all the shifted first trip to England. New experiences and awareness of their involvement in the art of awakened living and creativity of an artist, forced to actively beating heart. Had his own workshop in Moscow and "life is boiling", — according to the artist.

Despite the rapidly changing pace of life, huge amount of new impressions, Shapkina popular in the art of slowness and pauses, "stop in the flow of traffic". The feeling of loneliness, a sense of his destiny and at the same time, the transience of the events it brings to your creativity. "I think that painting, like music, poetry is the one stop — respite".

a Leitmotif of many paintings the motif of man's loneliness in the modern world. Despite the brutality of the characters Nina Shapkina-Корчугановой, they look quite romantic, but at the same time aloof, as if confronting the reality around them. In many canvases the plastic power of the images associated with the style of the sculptor, as if clinging form ("the Three graces", "Sun").

"My favorite theme, the counterpoint is the theme of passers-by — is a lament for the crowd, which, in essence, all alone and the way people intersect only by chance and conditionally", — tells the painter about his work. It is like trying to stop time, to understand and capture the movement. Often the heroes of her paintings — strangers to each other people who, even as a United composition, still seem distant, looking in different directions ("Spring", "Scattered")...

Despite the precise, powerful figure, revealing the nature of the characters, the canvases are collected, "made" only by color. "I'm trying to speak the language of painting, constructing his sentences without hypocrisy, and do not consider it necessary to follow the fashion in art, often leading to the gate of the absurd and emptiness in a glossy package". His life and professional experience, the author expresses with a brush on the canvas, trying to reflect the complex and deep world, passing in the generalized form of the dramatic reality of events.

At the first exhibition of Nina Shapkina-Корчугановой (2019) in the Ryazan art Museum presents more than thirty paintings. By the end of 1990-х to the present day, they allowed us to trace the evolution of the artist's career.

Her works are in the collections of the State Russian Museum (Saint-Петербург), Moscow Museum of modern art (MMOMA), Vologda regional art gallery (Vologda), the Yaroslavl art Museum (Yaroslavl), Museum-выставочного complex "New Jerusalem" (Istra, Moscow region), Samara regional art Museum (Samara), Ulyanovsk regional art Museum (Ulyanovsk), Ryazan regional art Museum (Ryazan), in private collections in France, Sweden, Italy, Hungary, England, USA, Greece.

Alexei Smirnov