The artist Yury Alexandrovich Zhigalov was born in 1955 in Mstyora. He graduated from the Mstyora Vocational Art School named after Fyodor Alexandrovich Modorov. From 1973 to 2015, Zhigalov worked at the factory “Proletarian Art”, now called “The Center of Traditional Mstyora Miniature”.

Zhigalov participates in regional, Moscow and foreign exhibitions. He largely follows the tradition of incorporating in his compositions the so-called “Yurin’s ornament”. It is a special style of ornamental painting created by the outstanding Mstyora artist Yevgeny Yurin. Zhigalov has repeatedly stressed that the most important element in his work is the choice of colors for the miniature.

Zhigalov works with different colors, but prefers a warm color palette. His miniatures are distinguished by his fine technique and abundance of refined golden curlicues. The artist has been honing his skills for a long time and has developed a peculiar technique of painting with gold powder. In his works, Zhigalov most often depicts bright bouquets of flowers filled with the invigorating energy of the sun, and ripe fruits.

The composition “Summer Melody” is made in warm shades. The reddish-brown color palette is perfectly combined with gold leaf. In the central part of the composition, in an oval, the artist depicted a bouquet of garden flowers: these are roses — “the queens of flowers”, blue forget-me-nots and daisies. The red-brown background is filled with an ornamental mesh pattern made with gold leaf. The grid, like a field dotted with flowers, is grounded at the corners of the rectangle with a large pattern of silhouette images.

At the sides of the jewelry box, the artist continues the same color scheme, preserving the dynamic element by alternating the colors, the curlicues and the fine ornamental mesh pattern, covering the entire space of the item. In the composition, the painter embodied his vision of beauty in nature. His miniature delights and awakens in the viewer a love of nature. It represents a universal understanding of order and harmony in the world. While working on the miniature “Summer Melody”, Yury Alexandrovich Zhigalov found the creative path that he invariably adheres to when creating his works.