Autobiographical Notes

I dedicate these modest notes to my dear unforgettable mother Rita, who with all the presence of her life inspired me to modest achievements in art and was for me a constant feast of life. Natalia Koshelkova June–July 2013 Autobiographical Notes Birth and Childhood I was born on 4 February 1946 in the city of Leningrad. I was planned by my parents at the time of the Soviet Union’s victory of Nazi Germany, in early May 1945, and so I am a child of the Victory. I never knew my father, as he died in the first months after my birth. So I was brought up by my mother and grandmother. We lived in a very small, 15-square-metre room. It lay off a long corridor where there were around forty other rooms housing other families. That was what was known as the communal corridor system in a four-storey house full of such rooms and families. Each corridor had two public toilets, men’s and women’s, and one big kitchen with several gas-stoves and one sink with only cold water. Before the war my mother and grandmother had lived in a beautiful apartment. It was hit by a bomb during the siege. All their property was burnt. With much difficulty Grandma and Mama found a few valuables among the ashes and moved in with relatives temporarily. Later the state proposed that they move to that small room with the corridor system where I was born and lived until the age of eighteen, when Mama was given a cosy apartment in the centre of Leningrad through her work. It was then that I got my own separate room and a bathtub with hot water. From early childhood I spent most of my time at home with my grandmother. She had a beautiful voice. Often she sang Russian songs, including romances, and sometimes operatic arias too. Grandma taught me how to listen to, love and understand music. And music became an important element in my life. But most of all from a young age I loved to draw. Mama worked an awful lot, but on her days off she often took me around museums, mainly the Russian Museum and the Hermitage. So from early childhood I had the opportunity to get to know paintings by Russian and European artists in some of the largest museums in Russia. 1 Mama would often take me to the theatre as well. So even as a child I saw lots of ballets and heard lots of operas in Leningrad’s finest theatres. For a week after one of those outings my drawings would be inspired by what I had seen in the museum or theatre. Holidays Public holidays were special occasions in my life. When we celebrated Victory Day, the radio would always broadcast Dmitry Shostakovich’s Festive Overture or Alexander Borodin’s Second Symphony, known as the Bogatyr Symphony, or Alexander Glazunov’s ballet music. Through that beautiful music life became filled with hopes and expectation of some beautiful future. The streets of Leningrad were decorated with bright lights and flags. Mama liked to take me to the city centre and we strolled along elegant Nevsky Prospekt and along the Neva embankment, where large festive ships were anchored in the river with sparkling bright lights and pennants. After those strolls Mama and I would return home to our humble little room. Grandma would put sweet yeast bread with almonds and raisins that she had had just baked on the table. Then we sat for a long time drinking tea and listening to the festive music on the radio, or else Mama put on a record of some opera music or Italian songs and Russian romances. Those were happy days for me. Ever since I was always fond of drawing public holidays, the decorated streets, people with balloons and little flags, and the glittering lights of ships on the Neva or the River Fontanka. Family birthdays were special festive days. Despite our family’s difficult housing conditions and very modest financial means, on birthdays we always had a lot of guests. There were my childhood friends, friends of Mama and Grandma, many of them from their own childhoods, and, of course, relatives. Everyone stayed sitting round the table for a long time chatting and singing. Sometimes Mama carried the gramophone and records out of our little room into the corridor and then our communal neighbours joined the celebrations, dancing and having fun. Later, when Mama got the large apartment through her work, she bought a concert grand piano and Grandma often played on it and sang. And those moments were also holidays in my life. Mama herself was a very festive person, in love with life, and she was able to always create a festive atmosphere around her. Mama’s talent for being present and constantly involved in my life was always a holiday for me. Later, thanks to such festive elements, the concert theme appeared in my work, the Family series, and the Holidays cycle arose. 2 Starting to Learn to Draw When I turned seven, Grandma started to take me to a drawing group at the Lenin District House of Pioneers and Schoolchildren on Yegorov Street, not far from the Technological Institute metro station. At the same time I began learning the ’cello, but sadly not for long, because I showed more keenness for drawing. My teacher in that drawing group was Victor Innokentyevich Plotnikov. I later found out that he also taught the history of the arts at the Leningrad Academy of Arts. At the drawing group I first learnt from my teacher that a person’s head doesn’t grow from their shoulders, but is held up on their neck. I learnt how branches join on to the trunk of a tree. And I got some idea of light and shade in a painting. I went to that drawing group until I was 13. Those lessons gave me a natural grounding for entering art college. Mama helped me to choose which one – the Demidov College, as it was known. She had a simple explanation for her choice: “Where there’s less bohemianism.” Besides that, the Demidov College gave good training in the art of teaching drawing, technical drawing and painting. There I would have the opportunity to acquire a good profession, and therefore work, by the time I was 18. In 1959, when I was in my 7th year at school, Mama and I went to the art college on its open day. There we got to know one of the teachers – Gleb Ivanovich Orlovsky. He looked at the works I had brought with me and offered his help in preparing me for the entrance exam. So for the whole of my seventh school year I travelled to the college each week for a meeting with Gleb Ivanovich. At the end of my year of lessons, Mama and I brought him a big bouquet of flowers. Mama kept trying to pay for my lessons, but Gleb Ivanovich categorically refused to take money and only accepted the flowers. He was a man of exceptional qualities of mind and refinement. Meeting him was a great stroke of fortune in my life. Afterwards, when I had entered the art college, Gleb Ivanovich was my teacher in the drawing and watercolour technique group for the first two years. Student Years I finally passed the exams and at the end of August 1960 was enrolled as a student of the Leningrad Demidov College of Graphic Art and Teacher Training. The curriculum was very intensive. Besides learning general school subjects, each day I had no fewer than four hours of drawing, painting and composition lessons. The compulsory courses also included modelling, the history of the arts, the study of typefaces and also three-dimensional draughtsmanship. In the first two years I mainly mastered watercolour technique, while in the third and fourth I began learning to paint in oils. The genres that we studied were the still life, portrait and landscape. Particular attention was devoted to composition. 3 We painted portraits from a live model. For the first two years we did the head and shoulders, then a half-length with the arms, and in the third and fourth years we studied the whole figure full-length, seated or standing in various poses with various twists of the body. Sometimes we were asked to spend 40 hours capturing a model in oils or in pencil. Before such lengthy exercises we made a lot of sketches in pencil, sanguine or charcoal. At the end of each year of college we had summer plein-air practice, usually in June. The task for our summer practical work was to produce a true-to-life depiction of a subject in natural conditions, i.e. in the open air, with light and air playing an active role. In this plein-air work we learned to paint a landscape or a figure in a landscape in oils or watercolour. At the end of June 1964, after four years of studies at the college, I was awarded a diploma giving me the title “Teacher of Drawing and Technical Drawing”. At 18 years old I already had a proper profession: I could earn my own keep and, of course, help Mama to enlarge our modest family budget. By September 1964 I had a job in a school, where I began teaching drawing and technical drawing to the senior pupils in years 7 to 10. Mama advised me not to rest on my laurels, but to continue my training at an institute.

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