Born in 1975 in Saint-Petersburg, Russia Lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland
1955 - 2000 Diploma from l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris, France
1988 - 1993 Diploma from l’Ecole des Beaux Arts, B.V. Logansson in affiliation with l’Académie des Beaux Arts of Russia, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
Natasha Ivanova: The Saga of the Bandits and Angels
Let’s shut the door. In the bluish light of the cell, the bodies are blue, too. Seventeen men are waiting for you. Cramped, despite the huge format of the new triptych “Brothers” devised by Natacha Ivanova. A woman dominates them, imperious, blind and almost naked. They patiently wait in silence for something vague, between prayer and threat.
They each form a tableaux vivants, stranger than they are dire. Their tattoos are one-colored. This line made with a razor in Russian jails unites them in one and the same suddenly universal tone, in the same unisex family, prisoner of this underworld. Like the hordes of penitents awaiting the last judgment on a desolate crag in the old masters, artists who were still afraid of the wrath of God. The portrait is one of Natacha Ivanova’s main themes: she is a painter fiercely in love with grand painting, the history of its pictorial techniques, and its iconographic codes, heir to the fine lessons of the Northern School. Over the years, this young native of St. Petersburg, has lost nothing of her wild imagination, or her hand, which is so confident, daring, and delicate. A marriage of opposites, as in children’s tales, which has already given birth to haunted, melancholic frescoes, filled with “Nurses” (2008) and young men in uniforms, undergoing the discipline of the parade ground “The Soldiers” (2007). Natacha Ivanova sets off on the warpath like a prisoner secretly fighting and expressing herself come what may against the order of things. The artist plunges body and soul into an imposed figure, which she chooses from among the hardest, interprets it very freely, and transfigures it with all its symbolist power. “What interested me in the ‘Russian criminal tattoos’ listed in two volumes by Danzig Baldaev, is not the glorification of the criminal or the pictorial art lurking in tattoos. It’s the human figure. The body, which becomes language per se, fascinates me”. With her, no fascination with brute force, like David Cronenberg’s ultra-virile killers in Eastern Promises (2007). Gentleness, something languid, and abandonment like the sinner’s between crimes and punishments. A certain pride at existing in the face of, and in spite of, everything, metaphor of youth and freedom. A meaningful nostalgia caught by the direct confrontation between subject and painter. A sense of unfinishedness which gives these Brothers, on the face of it accursed, the ethereal character of angels, those beings akin to people, and yet alien to them. “A very large format is always an event, a decision, the act which calls for the most courage from an artist. It’s like talking out loud”, says this painter from another time who feels she is “more of a monumental soul than a miniaturist”. She attended classes at the Hermitage School, then at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. This time she has doubled the wager of the large format by imposing upon herself the technique peculiar to icon painters, so as to give these prisoners an unreal flesh, bluish like El Greco’s in some cases, pink and fleshy like Rembrandts in others. Each prisoner was first drawn with very hard brown outlines, detailing each tattoo. Then covered with a dark greenish layer, “so that the flesh then comes out pinker, the way the Renaissance painters liked it”. Making referenced to sacred icons to emphasize the prisoners’ melancholy, depicting bandits the way saints were portrayed, in an entirely coded way, “this is a deliberate contradiction, the most radical way of getting away from stereotypes and anecdotal descriptions”, says the artist of worlds gone astray and stubborn visions, one of the rare brave ones who has not turned her back on the easel in favour of contemporary installations. From her love for group portraits has come the idea for this triptych, where each body is in motion, where the uniformity of the austerity underscores the identity of each figure, where sensuality springs forth from the squeezed rigor of the whole. Cold, detached sensuality, as in the dream, the shift from one state to another, from life to eternity. In the second triptych, Transition, the superb draped back of the central motif has a slightly menacing beauty which calls to mind the femmes fatales of David Lynch’s films, where the hereafter is always somewhere at hand. The picture, a monumental one, is at once intimate and intimidating through its juxtaposition of different frames and tempos. The picture is a kind of film still, of the most contemporary sort, but in the tradition of the great Dutch pictures of the guilds and their impeccable dignitaries standing at attention. The first image that struck the painter? A group of women. “Painting is my refuge, more than ever. In it, I can do anything. My prisoners talk about the things in me that are the most raw, the most direct, the most honest and the most cruel, too”. The Ancients would agree.
Valérie Duponchelle (Translated from the French by Simon Pleasance & Fronza Woods)
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2012 San Antonio Collects: Contemporary – Works from important local collections and the Linda Pace Foundation, March 24 – July 1, 2012, San Antonio Museum of Art, USA
2011 The Saga Of Bandits And Agels, Cueto Project, New York, USA
2008 The Dear Hunter, Cueto Project, New York, USA
2006 Wonderland, Galerie Valérie Cueto, Paris, France
2005 Natacha Ivanova Paintings, Jerwood Foundation, London, UK Museum Alfred Canel, Pont Audemer, France
2004 Centré d’Art Claude Bessou, Saint Grégoire, France
2003 Le Grenier à Sel: 11th annual Russian Film Festival, Honfleur, France
2002 Stephen Walton Fine Art, London, UK Queens Road Gallery, Aberdeen, Scotland
2001 Modern Gallery, London, UK Queens Road Gallery, Aberdeen, UK
2000 Galerie Philippe Frégnac, Paris, France Espace Laurence Graham, London, UK
1999 Stephen Lacey Gallery, London, UK
1996 Rendez Vous Gallery, Aberdeen, UK
Selected Group Exhibitions
2011 The Flowers of Evil Still Bloom, Art Museum Helsinki curated by Janne Gallen-Kallela-Siren and Valérie Cueto Dallas Art Fair, Cueto Project, Dallas, U.S.A
2010 Les Maitres Fous, Freies Museum, Berlin, Germany Moscow dans la valise, Les Salaisons, Paris, France Vuk Vidor and Friends, Galerie Poulsen, Copenhagen A Midnight Summer Dream, David Colossi, Nicolas Darrot, Natacha Ivanova, Mark Licari, Marko Velk, Vuk Vidor, Cueto Project, New York, USA
2009 Curator’s Choice, curated by Dr. Rolf Lauter, Swiss Art Institute, Karlsruhe, Germany
2008 ART BRUSSELS 26th Contemporary Art Fair, Brussels, Belgique
2007 Zeitgeist, Cueto Project, New York, USA Girls Insights, Galerie Defrost, Paris, France
2006 Amour, Gloire et Beauté, Salon Jeune Création, Charenton-le-Pont, France
2005 Salon Jeune Création, Paris, France
2004 Salon Jeune Création, Paris, France Paranoïa, Museum of Architecture Choussev, Moscow, Russia
2003 Paranoïa, Galerie Iragui, Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture, Paris, France
2001 National Portraits Gallery, London, UK Stephen Lacey Gallery, London, UKArt First Gallery, Summer Show, London, UK
1999 Visages et Expressions, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris, France Salons des Indépendants, Paris, France 5th Salon International d’Arts Plastiques, Valognes, France
1996 Biennale de la Villa Medicis, Saint Maur, France Novembre à Vitry, Biennale de peinture de Vitry sur Seine, France
Selected public and private collections
Thomas Olbricht Collection Swiss Art Institution Michael D. Maloney Collection (Texas) Gloria Thurn von Taxis (Germany) Ralph Achincloss Michel Jacquet Emmanuel Pinto (London) Bernard Fleury (Paris – Geneva)
Awards
2007 1st Prize of Painting: Antoine Marrin, Paris, Frankreich
2006 Grand Prize: 51ème Salon de Montrouge, Montrouge, Frankreich 1st Prize of Painting: Dumas-Miller, Academie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Frankreich
2003 Grand Prize of Painting: Saint-Grégoire, Saint-Grégoire, Frankreich
2001 BP Portrait Award, National Portraits Gallery, London, UK
1999 Grand Prix Spécial du Jury: Prix Paul Louis Weiller, Institut de France, Paris, Frankreich 1st Prize: André and Berthe Noufflard, Fondation de France, Paris, Frankreich
1998 1st Prize of Drawing: Pierre David Weill, Institut de France, Paris, Frankreich
1997 1st Prize: Concours Perrier-Jouët des Artistes Contemporains, Paris, Frankreich
1996 1st Prize: Concours Reflets de Paris, organised by MBA and la Mairie de Paris, Frankreich
Awards 2007 1st Prize of Painting: Antoine Marrin, Paris, France
2006 Grand Prize: 51ème Salon de Montrouge, Montrouge, France 1st Prize of Painting: Dumas-Miller, Academie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
2003 Grand Prize of Painting: Saint-Grégoire, Saint-Grégoire, France
2001 BP Portrait Award, National Portraits Gallery, London, UK
1999 Grand Prize Special du Jury: Prix Paul Louis Weiller, Institut de France, Paris, France 1st Prize: André and Berthe Noufflard, Fondation de France, Paris, France
1998 1st Prize of Drawing: Pierre David Weill, Institut de France, Paris, France
1997 1st Prize: Concours Perrier-Jouët des Artistes Contemporains, Paris, France
1996 1st Prize: Concours Reflets de Paris, organised by MBA and la Mairie de Paris, France
