Zernova Yekaterina

Biography

YEKATERINA S. ZERNOVA (1900 in Simferopol – 1995 in Moscow) was a famous Soviet painter, member of the Soviet Artists’ Union, Honoured Artist of the RSFSR (1974).
From 1919 to 1924 she was educated at Vkhutemas (Higher Art and Technical Studios) where her teachers were I. Mashkov, A. Shevchenko and D. Sterenberg, simultaneously with studying physics and mathematics at Moscow University.
Zernova painted posters and contributed to many Soviet children’s and educative magazines as an illustrator. From 1928 to 1931 she was a member of OST (Society of Easel Painters), one of the most prominent artistic associations of the 1920s, after the breakup of which she joined the brigade of artists who painted industrial and agricultural scenes. In 1939 she was among the decorators of the Soviet exhibition hall at the World Fair in New York.
During World War II Zernova made sketches in medical battalions and field operating rooms.
After the war she dealt with historical and battle painting. She also worked as a stage designer and was involved with film making: in collaboration with Y. Pimenov she designed the set-dressing for Pyrjev’s Kuban Cossacks (1949). In the late 1950s she devoted herself mainly to monumental art (sgraffiti, panel-paintings and mosaics, including those decorating the halls of Moscow State University).
From the 1940s to 1970s Zernova taught at Moscow art colleges. She also wrote a number of educational and autobiographical books and articles. She participated in hundreds of exhibitions both in the USSR and abroad. Her first one-man show took place in Moscow in 1936.
Zernova’s works are kept in many Russian and foreign art galleries, including the Tretyakov Gallery, the Museum of Modern Russian History (Moscow), the National Museum in Warsaw (Poland), the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis (Minnesota, USA), as well as in Reynold Johnson’s, Mathew Bown’s and other private collections.