May 5, 1955
В Leningrad passed away Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva. One of the iconic figures of the Silver Age. An artist who contributed greatly to the revival of engraving in Russia. The cousin and wife of a chemist. Sergei Lebedev — the creator of an industrial method for producing synthetic rubber.
In her engravings, she, like no one else, knows how to convey the desired mood in paints using a minimum of color scale. (Alexander Benois)
Born in 1871 Petersburg, in the family of a privy councilor Petra Ostroumova. The parents moved to the capital from Warsaw Six months before her birth. The climate change and her mother's depression took a toll on her health—of her six children, Anya was the weakest.
At age 5, she experienced a traumatic event: a fire at her dacha. Her mother, trying to save her children, wrapped them in blankets and threw them out of the second-story windows.
I had fits of unprovoked tears (a consequence of the shock of the fire); but when they brought me an alder log and put a knife in my hands, I forgot about the tears. I'd take the log on my lap, sit on the floor, and begin carving alphabet letters or simple designs. The cutouts quickly turned red on the silvery bark and gave off a pungent smell.
At 13, she contracted diphtheria and developed cervical paralysis, spending several months in bed. She began drawing.
After recovering, she went to elementary school at the Baron's drawing school. Stieglitz. They developed their eye; using a ruler when copying drawings was prohibited. They worked with reed pens and used a lot of shading.
While shading in different directions and at different angles, we had to keep the elbow of the right hand completely still on the table, moving only the wrist... This was very useful to me later when I began to engrave
After high school, she entered the Stieglitz School. It was difficult—she was "suffocated by drawing." She quit. She took the exam at the School of the Academy of Arts. She worked in a workshop. Ilya Repin. She was well regarded—Repin allowed her to travel abroad and study with James Whistler, a master of portrait painting, etching, and lithography. He instilled in her discipline and the ability to work with a limited palette.
From 1899 she collaborated with the "World of Art" association. At that time, Repin entered into a polemic with Diaghilev and broke off relations with the "World of Art" group. To qualify for the title of artist, the Academy had to find a new mentor. The engraver became the new mentor. Vasily Mate. While doing engraving, I realized that I had found myself.
I reached the point where, no matter what I looked at, I mentally cut it with a chisel. A face, a landscape, a bird in flight… <> I didn’t recognize the old engraving, verbose, multi-lined. It was boring, official, and so humiliating <> I was fascinated by brevity… I was especially interested in line as such. A line into which many lines merged
In 1900, she submitted 14 woodcuts, including color ones, to the Academy's artist competition—a pioneering innovation in letterpress printing at the time. She described the creation of one of them, "Finland with a Blue Sky," as follows:
I went to the nearby swamp. I wanted to convey the sadness and wretchedness of this place with its frail, gnarled trees. Sitting on a stump, with a palm plank, having first blackened it, on my knees, I cut it out, looking at the landscape without outlining a design. Then, on the back of the smooth side of the plank, I marked the horizon line with a pencil and rolled blue paint from the top edge to the horizon, and with a finger wrapped in a rag, I wiped this paint away in places, imitating the shape of the clouds... I printed it by hand using the method I had used all my life... Each new print produced a different sky, since I deliberately varied it, wiping it with a rag in a new way.
Later, she rarely resorted to creating monotype engravings—such boards couldn't be used in a printing press. Ostroumova, however, dreamed of creating engravings that could be printed in large quantities.
After the revolution, she remained in Russia and taught. During World War II, she created a series of "poignant images" of the siege of Leningrad. Her works are held in museums around the world.
She lived to be 83. She left behind very vivid "Autobiographical Notes."
