Notes

Ekaterina Zernova was born in Simferopol on the Crimea in 1900. In 1914 the family moved to Moscow. Zernova studied at the Moscow University from 1917-1923 and at the F.I. Rerberg’s Studio School, Moscow (1915-1918). After the Revolution she studied Physics and Mathematics and also at the VKhuTeMAS (the State High Art and Technical Workshops) from 1919 – 1924 under Mashkov, Shevchenko and Sterenberg. She started to exhibit in 1923.

Zernova was a member of the OSt (Society of Easel Painters) from 1928-1932 and of the IZOBRIGADA – a group formed in 1931 by former members of the OSt who supported a platform of “political realism” in art. In 1932 she became a member of  The Union of Soviet Artists.

In 1920 she provided drawings for the review Za Proletarskoe Iskustvo (For proletarian Art). She designed posters and was represented at the exhibition Graphic Art and Typography of the USSR in Amsterdam in 1929 and at the First Travelling Exhibition of Paintings and Graphics, which opened in Moscow in 1929. She exhibited in Vienna in 1930 and in 1932 she took part in the Biennale of Venice. Other shows include: Anti Imperialist Exhibition (Moscow 1931), Artists of the Russian Federation over Fifteen Years (Leningrad 1932), Artists of the Russian Federation over Fifteen Years (Moscow 1933), Fifteen Years of the Worker’s and Peasant’s Red Army, Moscow 1933 and Twenty Years of the Worker’s and Peasant’s Red Army, Industry of Socialism (Moscow 1939), All-Union Art Exhibition (Moscow 1947 and 1950). And there were many, many more.

During World War II the artist was a participant of the Moscow Defend Battalion and in 1943 was send to the front as a member of a specialized brigade of painters. After the war she depicted much of the ruins of war, but also made some of her most beautiful portraits and genre works.

Ekaterina Zernova taught at the MIPIDI (Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Art (1946-1953) and at the Moscow Textile Institute (1953 – 1972). She was also a monumentalist (mosaic panels), graphic artist (book illustrations, posters), theatre artist and author of Budushchemu Khudozhniku ob Iskustve Zhivopisi (To the future Artist about the Art of Painting, Moscow 1976) and of her memoires published under the title Vospominaniya monumentalista (Recollections of a Monumental Painter) in 1983.  Zernova died in Moscow in 1993.