Figurina Elena

A famous St. Petersburg painter, graphic artist, sculptor.

E. Figurina was born in Latvia (city of Ventspils) in 1955. Fourteen years later, her family moves to Leningrad. Here Elena consciously goes to study at a music school, graduates from it in guitar class, and teaches there for several years after graduation. Then the future artist gets the profession of an engineer, graduating from the Leningrad Institute of Aviation Instrumentation. Her creative path began in her third year of the institute with the desire to buy paints. After successfully acquiring them, without having any technical skills, Elena began to paint. According to her, she never intended to become an artist or musician, all of this was just a hobby for her.

In the mid-1970s, major open exhibitions of unofficial art take place in Moscow and Leningrad, which stir not only artistic circles but also the general public. Many non-professional artists, working as engineers and teachers, begin to participate in the artistic process, sensing their creative potential. Something similar happens to Elena Figurina. A circle of acquaintances gradually forms, she begins to participate in apartment exhibitions, and joins the "Letopis" group, which is headed by Boris Koshelekhov. The artists' work in the group, far from socialist realism, was banned. The 1978 exhibition at the House of Folk Art is closed. During those years, Elena Figurina's painting style takes shape, which is quite expressive, using broad brushstrokes and local colors. Even the artist's earliest works do not fit into the framework of naive art, which for her is excessively straightforward and at the same time too passively contemplative.