Zinaida Kurchatova often painted portraits. Her series of children’s portraits is an interesting period of her artistic life. In the culture of the Sakha people, a child was associated with great wealth; for them, as the Yakut proverb says, “a child is a gift of God”.
Kurchatova painted the “Portrait of Sasha Pavlov” in 1976. A small dark-haired boy sits in a chair of an unusual shape. He is elegantly dressed in a white fur coat with a red scarf around his neck. Artists are usually very careful with the use of red as it is considered too bright and bold. However, Kurchatova was able to masterfully create harmony by adding white-grayish and graphically black shades.
Zinaida Ivanova-Unarova, an art critic, wrote that Kurchatova “represented the art school of Primorye and thought a lot about colour. She knew how to tone down the intensity of any colour, which lent her paintings a distinct soft and feminine touch.” Kurchatova chose pure and bright colours for the portrait - white, blue, red, and green. To accentuate the colours, she varied her brushstrokes in width, breadth, and direction. The unusual interior setting and rich colours create a festive atmosphere. The boy’s eyes are wide open, he is looking forward. Only children have such a direct, frank and innocent look.
The ‘Portrait of Sasha Pavlov’ is a wonderful example of the artist’s unique sense of colour that revealed her gift as a colourist. Kurchatova masterfully used subtle transitions of shades to convey the character and mood of the person. She tried to immerse herself in the soul of the child and express the child’s inner feelings, which made her series of children’s portraits deeply personal and lyrical.
Kurchatova was born in 1948 in the village of Bolshoi Patom of the Irkutsk oblast. She studied painting at the Yakut Art College, and, later, at the Far Eastern Institute of Arts in Vladivostok. After graduation, she returned to Yakutsk and began to teach. Kurchatova mostly painted landscapes and portraits. Nevertheless, regardless of the genre, her works are permeated by a characteristic feeling of gracious sadness and harmony of the world.
