Zinaida Serebriakova, 1884-1967
By Romana Bardetti
Self Portrait at the Dressing Table, 1909, oil on canvas, 75 × 65 cm, Tretyakov Gallery
A Journey Home: Zinaida Serebriakova
The focus of this week’s artist biography is the staunchly real, yet wildly ambiguous Russian artist Zinaida Serebriakova. Serebriakova’s art reflects a lifetime of experiences, beginning with her youth in the Russian Empire and ending in her displacement from the USSR during WWII. This dialogue between the liberal past and the constrained future is visible in her two self-portraits At the Dressing Table and Self-Portrait from 1909 and 1956 respectively.
Serebriakova’s most renowned self-portrait from 1909 depicts her youthful and free mentality through her untamed hair, loose white dress, and thick impasto paint that is layered on the canvas. She appears here “radiating femininity,” pleased with her own reflection that greets the audience with a seductive or romantic undertone. We are afforded the opportunity to peer into her private life – the dressing room – and to know, or at least be convinced that we know, Serebriakova on a more intimate level. On top of this, Serebriakova introduces a sense of ambiguity, questioning whether she is dressing or undressing. Because of this, an additional layer of sensuality can be applied, leading the audience to imagine what events follow this portrait and whether we would be privy to them. A deeper reading of the image, however, reveals that the “yellow and bluish tints [allude to] the low winter morning sunlight” outside, removing the ambiguity when studying the portrait closely. Moreover, an overwhelming sense of freedom and autonomy oozes from Serebriakova’s early portrait, communicating the transition out of girlhood into a mature, yet ever youthful, woman.
Self Portrait, 1956, oil on canvas, 63 × 54 cm, Tula Regional Art Museum
Serebriakova’s later life can be summed up in her self-portrait from 1956, in which she presents an aged version of herself in modest dress with traditional artist’s tools. Here, we observe not a youthful, seductive lady, but a sombre, private, and mature woman. Between the dates of two depictions, Serebriakova had moved to France for economic prosperity, became widowed by typhus, and was forced to renounce her USSR citizenship to obtain international refuge. Restrained also by the Nazi Occupation of Vichy France, the artist had little opportunity to practice her craft, limited to modest modes of representation, reflected in her “old-fashioned” art style, while she was dedicated to raising her four children. By 1956, she had no hope of returning to the USSR, living out her final years in France, an invisible artist in her homeland.
Despite the hardships the artist faced until 1956, in 1957 Serebriakova was permitted to return to the USSR by the Soviet government, demonstrating a new age of hope for the artist and her legacy. Although her old age and illness meant that she could neither paint nor travel, her artworks, due to her daughter Tatyana’s efforts, were exhibited in Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad. She could now be seen and studied by her nation, given a new sense of purpose and remembered not just as an emigrant, but also as a proud Russian artist. Finally, in 1965, “her art had at last returned home.”
Bibliography
Ermakova, Elizaveta. “Zinaida Serebriakova, First Famous Female Russian Artist.” Daily Art Magazine. 2021. https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/zinaida-serebriakova-russian-artist/.
Hilton, Alison L. “Zinaida Serebriakova.” Women’s Art Journal 3, no. 2 (1982): 32-45. https://doi.org/10.2307/1358032.
“Zinaida Serebriakova,” Arthive. 2024. https://arthive.com/zinaidaserebriakova.