About exhibition

The extensive exhibition will include both iconic paintings and graphic sheets by People's Artist of the Russian Federation and Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts Albina Georgievna Akritas, as well as works not previously exhibited that reflect the development of the artist's work and experiments with materials. A special section is devoted to contemporaries and friends of the master who influenced her formation. The artist's work is a vivid example of the fusion and mutual enrichment of two cultures. Her high level of skill and fidelity to the Russian realist school, combined with the irrepressible passion of the Greek temperament, give each of her paintings uniqueness and recognizability. A painter by nature, she always thinks 'from the patch' regardless of the technique she uses or the color scheme she develops. 'I often think that the word "painting" originally had a somewhat different meaning than it does now. It did not denote a technique, it did not imply that a work was made with oil or tempera paints using a brush on canvas or cardboard. No, the word meant living writing, truly alive. For me that deep meaning still endures,' the author believes. The surface of each of her canvases or sheets of paper literally plays, breathes, and vibrates with shifts and combinations of color, sometimes dense, sometimes transparent, evoking ceramics, monumental frescoes, or oriental carpets. In every brushstroke, every color combination, every compositional decision, the artist's soul lives. Albina Georgievna combines immersed, selfless creativity with precise, deliberate experimentation. She is willing to endlessly 'test' the different possibilities of painting and graphic arts: she works in oil, tempera, and pastel; turns to the rare technique of engraving on cardboard; uses collage and various mixed techniques; and incorporates bronze and gold into her palette, which are organically integrated into the painting's color harmony. More details on the Russian Academy of Arts website.