marie eltchaninoff struve

Marie Alexandrovna Struve is born in 1925 in Nice, in the family of Fr. Alexander Vladimirovitch Eltchaninov and the iconographer Tamara Vladimirovna Eltchaninova. In 1934 the family Eltchaninov moves to Paris with their three children. Father Alexander dies a few weeks after they have settled in Paris. Marie Alexandrovna grows up in the milieu of the Russian intellectuels and Orthodox christians to whom belong Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, Mother Maria (Skobtsov), Elie Fondaminsky-Bounakov, Vsevolod Roudnev and many members of the ACER of which Marie will be a member for the rest of her life. Fr. Sergius Bulgakov will be her spiritual father until the end of his life in 1944.

Already since her childhood Marie desired to study at the École des Beaux Arts and to become an artist and painter. In 1946 she suffers from tuberculosis and will take a rest in the newly founded Monastery of the Protection of the Mother of God in Bussy-en-Othe. At this time the Monastery invites the iconographers Sœur Jeanne (Reitlinger) and Tamara Eltchaninov, the mother of Marie Struve, to paint the icons of the iconostasis of the first church of the Monastery. Marie helps with the painting of the icons of the twelve Major Feasts and finds in icon painting her real vocation. She becomes a member of the Association « The Icon » which gathers artists, architects, collectors and historians of Russian art.

Marie Struve's journey as an iconographer (in French)

In 1948 at the congress of the ACER she meets her future husband, Nikita Struve. They marry in 1958. Nikita devotes himself to the studies of Russian hought and culture. As a writer, translator and editor of several works consecrated to this subject, he will stay all his life very close to the Church and the ACER. Marie is going to work closely to her husband and continue to paint icons, while developing a style and a technique which is typical for the « school » of her teacher, sœur Jeanne (Reitlinger).This freedom of artistic expression, which allows her to connect traditional Orthodox iconography and Russian « neo-primitivism », makes her a unique iconographer.

To the most important artistic works of Marie Struve belong the iconostasis of the church of the Transfiguration at the Monastery of the Protection of the Mother of God in Bussy-en-Othe, the iconostasis of the old chapel of St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood (New York,USA), the icons of the second level of the iconostasis of the church of Saint Nicholas in Joliet (Illinois, USA), the iconostasis of the church of the Resurrection of Christ in Claremont (New Hampshire, USA), the iconostasis of the church of Saint Cyprian of Carthage in Midlothian (Virginia, USA), the iconostasis of the church of Saint John the Baptist in Warren (Ohio, USA) and the iconostasis of the church of Sainte-Catherine in Chambésy (Switzerland).

Marie Struve is called to God on November 13, 2020. She is buried at the Russian cemetery in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.