Zenaïde Evguenievna Lanceray Serebriakoff

Zinaida Serebryakova spent her childhood on the Neskuchnoye estate in one of the most famous art families Benoit-Lanceray. Her grandfather, Nicholas Benois, was a famous architect, her father Eugene Lansere was a famous sculptor, and her mother Ekaterina Nikolaevna (1850-1933, daughter of the architect Nicholas Benois, sister of the architect Leonty Benois and the artist Alexandre Benois) was a graphic artist in her youth. Nadezhda Leontyevna Benois (married to Ustinov), a cousin of Zinaida, was the mother of the British actor and writer Peter Ustinov - thus, he was Z. E. Lancera's cousin.

In 1900, Zinaida graduated from a female gymnasium and entered an art school founded by Princess M.K.Tenisheva. In 1903-1905 she was a student of the portrait painter OE Braz. In 1902-1903 she traveled to Italy. In 1905-1906 he studied at the Accademia de la Grand Chaumiere in Paris. In 1905, Zinaida Lansere married a student and her cousin Boris Serebryakov.

As an artist Serebryakova formed in St. Petersburg. Researchers have emphasized the influence of "Pushkin's and Blok's muses" on Serebryakova.

Since her apprenticeship, Z. Lanceray has tried to express her love for the beauty of the world. Her early works - "Peasant Girl" (1906, Russian Museum) and "Garden in Blossom" (1908, private collection) - tell about the search and the acute sensation of the beauty of the Russian land.

Serebryakova's self-portrait (Behind the Toilet, 1909, State Tretyakov Gallery), first shown at the large exhibition "World of Art" in 1910, brought wide popularity to Serebryakova. The self-portrait was followed by The Bather (1911, [Russian Museum), the portrait of EK Lansere (1911, private collection) and the portrait of the artist's mother “Ekaterina Lansere” (1912, Russian Museum) - mature works and solid in composition. In 1911, Serebryakova joined the World of Art society, but differed from the rest of the group in her love for simple subjects, harmony, plasticity and generalizations in her canvases.

In 1914-1917, the work of Zinaida Serebryakova experienced a flourishing period. During these years, she painted a series of paintings on the themes of folk life, peasant work and the Russian countryside, which was so close to her heart: "Peasants" (1914-1915, Russian Museum), "Harvest" (1915, Odessa Art Museum) and others.

The most important of these works was The Whitening of the Canvas (1917, State Tretyakov Gallery). The figures of peasant women, captured against the background of the sky, acquire a monumentality, emphasized by the low horizon line.

In 1916, Alexander Benois received an order to paint the Kazansky railway station in Moscow, he invites Evgeny Lanceray, Boris Kustodiev, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Zinaida Serebryakova to take part in the work. Serebryakova took the theme of the East: India, Japan, Turkey and Siam are allegorically presented in the form of beauties. At the same time, she is working on a still unfinished painting on the themes of Slavic mythology.

Zinaida met the October Revolution at her native estate Neskuchny. In December 1917, in connection with the beginning of the robberies of the families of landowners, the Serebryakov family moved to Zmiyov, then, at the beginning of 1918, to Kharkov, where on March 21, 1919, in a rented apartment in a house on Kontorskaya Street, 25, the artist's husband died of typhus Boris. Serebryakova was left with four children and a sick mother without a livelihood. In November 1919, the Serebryakovs' family estate was plundered and burned down. Due to the lack of oil paints, Zinaida had to switch to charcoal and pencil. During this period, some of the most famous group portraits of Serebryakova's children were created - "On the Terrace in Kharkov" and "House of Cards".

The artist refused to switch to the futuristic style, which was popular in the first post-revolutionary years, or to paint portraits of commissars. She found work at the Kharkov Archaeological Museum, where she made pencil sketches of exhibits. In December 1920, the Serebryakovs moved to Petrograd. The first months after the move, the family lived on Lakhtinskaya Street, on the Petrogradskaya side, in the apartment of their Kharkov friends BS and RA Baskov, and then in their "pre-revolutionary" apartment on the 1st line of Vasilievsky Island. In the spring of 1921, the artist with her mother and children moved to the "family house" on Glinka Street, 15. The artists of the Moscow Art Theater were settled in this apartment "to seal". In subsequent years, Serebryakova painted a lot on themes from theatrical life. In 1924, 14 of her works were successfully shown at an exhibition in New York. Of particular interest to the public was the painting "Sleeping Girl on a Red Blanket" (1923).

In the fall of 1924, Serebryakova went to Paris, having received an order for a large decorative panel. She failed to return, and she was cut off from her homeland and children (two children - Alexander and Ekaterina - were transported abroad). She lived at that time on a Nansen passport and in 1947 received French citizenship.

In 1928-1929 and 1932 Zinaida Serebryakova went to Morocco. There she paints the Atlas Mountains, Arab women, Africans in bright turbans. She also wrote a series of paintings dedicated to the fishermen of Brittany.

During the Khrushchev period, the Soviet authorities allowed contacts with Serebryakova. In 1960, after 36 years of separation, her daughter Tatyana (Tata) visited her, who became a theater artist at the Moscow Art Theater. In 1966, large exhibitions of Serebryakova's works were shown in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. She became popular in the USSR, her albums are printed in millions of copies, and her paintings are compared with Botticelli and Renoir.

Zinaida Serebryakova died at the age of 82 after a cerebral hemorrhage.