Artist
Natalia Smolyanskaya
Born 1958
Moscow, Russia
Nonfigurative painter
Natalia Vladimirovna Smolyanskaya was born in Moscow. She graduated in 1981 from the he graphic art department of the Moscow College of Polygraphy.
She was brought up in the tradition of the Russian realist school, which can be seen in her early works. However, in line with the social and art developments during the 1980s, she changed her style gradually, moving into the more abstracts spheres, both in relation to her large and bright canvases, and also in relation to her unique installations.
She herself decribes her process in creating art in the following way:
"… The idea of "obstacle" began for me a new game. There is always something obscuring your view, distracting your attention, making you turn your head. In the street, in the underground the milling people and traffic prevent you from resting your eye on anything. You always see only a piece of something - part of the wall or a house. There is always an obstacle caught by the corner of your eye. Colour is pulsating in that point and trying to get loose and fill the entire space.
… I find it hard to make out where the new image emerges - in me or in the wind slamming the open window pane.
… I live on the planet of childhood. The smells and dreams of childhood live on in colours on the canvas. Not things, not concrete forms, but sensations - the touch through contact with colour.
… I move by touch, as the blind do. What`s reality to them? Some rough surface, unexpected gaps, obstacles on the right and on the left. And colour not blended with objects, but dissolved in space.
… We have to assemble a whole out of fragments. The trolls have smashed the mirror and we are trying to piece it together. "
Since 1990 she is a member of the Polygon group of artists in Moscow.
She was brought up in the tradition of the Russian realist school, which can be seen in her early works. However, in line with the social and art developments during the 1980s, she changed her style gradually, moving into the more abstracts spheres, both in relation to her large and bright canvases, and also in relation to her unique installations.
She herself decribes her process in creating art in the following way:
"… The idea of "obstacle" began for me a new game. There is always something obscuring your view, distracting your attention, making you turn your head. In the street, in the underground the milling people and traffic prevent you from resting your eye on anything. You always see only a piece of something - part of the wall or a house. There is always an obstacle caught by the corner of your eye. Colour is pulsating in that point and trying to get loose and fill the entire space.
… I find it hard to make out where the new image emerges - in me or in the wind slamming the open window pane.
… I live on the planet of childhood. The smells and dreams of childhood live on in colours on the canvas. Not things, not concrete forms, but sensations - the touch through contact with colour.
… I move by touch, as the blind do. What`s reality to them? Some rough surface, unexpected gaps, obstacles on the right and on the left. And colour not blended with objects, but dissolved in space.
… We have to assemble a whole out of fragments. The trolls have smashed the mirror and we are trying to piece it together. "
Since 1990 she is a member of the Polygon group of artists in Moscow.