Anna Staritskaya

Anna Staritskaya was born in Ukraine in 1908. At the age of 13 she started studying drawing at the Countess Sukhanova-Tolstaya Art School in Moscow. In 1925 she moved to France to cure osseous tuberculosis. In 1926-31 Staritskaya attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia. Then she moved to Brussels where she specialized in advertising, worked as a graphic designer in a number of printing houses. After WWII Staritskaya lived in Nice and was very close to the ?Nice school¦ group of artists propagating the ideas of ?new realism¦. In 1952 the artist moved to Paris. The works created at that period of time reflect a sudden change of her style- from the restrain and the refinement of her previous works to the combinations of spontaneous bright colours of her abstract paintings. In the late 1950s Staritskaya tried to perfect her technique of creating collages, zinc, copper, stone and linoleum engravings. She illustrated miscellanies of poetry written by her friends. The artworks of the last decade of her life (1970s) were dominated by the demonic figures of magicians and spirits inspired by the old Slavonic mythology. The exhibition of the artist in the Russian Museum comprises 45 artworks: paintings, graphic works and collages of the 1950-70s.