The exhibition of the Irbit State Museum of Fine Arts features a linocut “Sleigh” by Galina Petrovna Molchanova.

This is a rural landscape. In the foreground, there is a horse-drawn sleigh with a woman guiding the horse and a man reclining on the sleigh. In the background, there is a landscape filled with the early spring warmth. The river has been freed from ice, the snow has melted in some areas of the hills and on the roofs of the houses scattered around the slopes. Although the characters are dressed in warm winter clothing, the bright and sunny composition suggests the arrival of spring.

Galina Molchanova began her creative journey as a graphic artist in the late 1950s. She graduated from the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Leningrad in 1958 and immediately joined the artistic community. She was fascinated by printmaking, especially by linocut. Throughout her career, Galina worked exclusively in color linocut, continually refining her skills. Over twenty years, she achieved an impressive level of color use comparable to that of painters. Each of her prints was unique both visually and conceptually. The color palettes of her works were very diverse, ranging from soft and cool to intense and emotional. The artist had a unique vision that she put into practice in her own distinct manner.

Galina Molchanova considered the landscape to be something grandiose, majestic, and even cosmical. She looked at it from different angles, sometimes from the bottom up, sometimes from a bird’s eye view, using either a single-point or an inverted perspective. Each time, she achieved a unity of compositional structure and integrity of the scene. As a result, the ordinary was filled with extraordinary, and most importantly, each of her images was imbued with a reverent attitude towards the subjects. It was with great love and affection that Galina Molchanova depicted seemingly mundane details such as smoke rising vertically from a chimney on a frosty morning, a plane flying low, people standing at a crossing, a truck arriving in a village, or a worker climbing an electric pole to fix something. She saw these everyday scenes as something bigger and made them a part of her art. The artist lived on the banks of the Msta River for many years, and the river always inspired her. Hilly terrain, earthen mounds, riverbanks, villages, people surrounded by nature, cows, and horses — these are the subjects of Galina Molchanova’s art.