Orlova-Afinogenova, Elena Lvovna

After an educational school, she entered a medical institute , but after a year of study, it became clear that her true calling was to be an artist. For the sake of this, she leaves medicine and tries to enter the Institute named after I.E. Repin . Working as a courier and a cleaner at the Academy, she enters the workshop of Professor Evsey Evseevich Moiseenko as a free listener. In the third year, she is admitted to the picturesque department, which she successfully graduated in 1982 from the class of E.E. Moiseenko .

In 1984, she left for Moscow. Numerous exhibitions of the artist begin.

In 1988, she enters the Union of Artists and returns to her native St. Petersburg , where she lives and works in the Pushkin District (formerly Tsarskoye Selo).

Painter Elena Orlova-Afinogenova graduated in 1982 from the workshop of the most famous and influential professor of the Institute of I.E. Repin Moiseenko in the 1960s and 80s. In her early work, she experienced a certain influence of him, yet in the future she clearly avoided the fact of becoming the artist of the “Moiseenko School”, which happened to many of his students.

In 1983, her first participation in the All-Union Exhibition of Portrait "Our Contemporary" in ( CHA ) took place.

Elena works in the genre of still life , studying the technique of multilayer painting by old Dutch masters. Trying to find a new one and comprehending the secrets of the craft, Elena Orlova-Afinogenova experimented a lot.

In the mid-1990s, a creative search led Elena to a new painting technique. A relief layer of gesso with the outlines of the future composition of the painting is applied to the hard base, and then the painting is applied to the dried gesso. This technique enhances the volume of the image and gives the paintings a special decorative monumentality.

In 1993, the first solo exhibition of the artist was held in the halls of the LOSH , followed by another one in the halls of the Pavlovsk Palace .

In 1996, in the course of cooperation with the Historical and Literary Museum of Pushkin (formerly Tsarskoye Selo), a cycle of monumental historical paintings of relief painting “Famous People of Tsarskoye Selo ” was born. Each composition in this series reproduces one of the episodes associated with one or another Tsarskoye Selo sovereign owner. The characters of the paintings are the founders of Tsarskoye Selo - Peter I and Catherine I , the main organizers of the tsar's residence of Empress Elizabeth I Petrovna and Catherine II (Princess Anhalt-Zerbst), Emperor Alexander I and the head of the city Y. V. Zakharzhevsky , the family of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II - depicted among the specific Tsarskoye Selo entourage in accordance with known real events of history. These historical reconstructions are not a dry chronicle of Tsarskoye Selo life and not local history pictures in their usual sense. First of all, Elena strives to artistically convey the flavor of the era and create convincing images of famous characters, to express her understanding of their characters, which were formed depending on historical events and the personal qualities of the heroes. This programmatic art involved a long preparatory period of studying the material and deep knowledge of the attributes and details of the reproduced era.

Along with historical paintings, Elena never interrupted her studies in still life . This her favorite genre in the 2000s reaches its maximum prosperity. The circle of the artist’s favorite pictorial motifs, along with elements eternal for still life art — flowers in vases, fruits and fruits, books, woven draperies — includes many unusual, exotic, and tantalizing things. In the period of the 2010s, new philosophical notes appeared in the artist’s work. At first glance, combinations of objects that are alogical, violations of their real scale, spatial displacements, disregard for the laws of gravity inform her paintings of a superficial resemblance to the works of surrealist artists , but her painting is different in spirit - it lacks the element of absurdity characteristic of surrealism, its focus on expressing the gloomy wrong side of the human consciousness.

• 1983-1990 - participation in the Moscow and Leningrad city, zonal, Republican and All-Union exhibitions
• 1990-2010 - participation in exhibitions in the St. Petersburg branch of the Union of Artists of Russia
• 1993 - the first solo exhibition in the halls of LOSH
• 1993 - personal exhibition in the halls of the Pavlovsk Palace
• 1995-1996 - personal exhibitions in the Historical and Literary Museum of Pushkin
• 1998 - personal exhibition in the Neigardt mansion
• 1999 - personal exhibition at the House of Journalists in St. Petersburg
• 2000 - personal exhibition in the gallery Altstadt-Galerie "UAW" in Dusseldorf
• 2002 - personal exhibition in Mantua (Italy)
• 2003 - personal exhibition in Berlin (Germany)
• 2006 - personal exhibition in Aalborg (Denmark)
• 2011 - personal exhibition in Philadelphia Philadelphia (USA)
• 2014 - personal exhibition in the castle of Zerbst (Germany)
• 2015 - personal exhibition in the Russian House in Berlin (Germany)

• Mundus Sensibilis - die sinnlich wahrnehmbare Welt. Historikerin A.-A. Griesbach MA, Kunstwissenschaftler A. Larionov. Ausstellungskatalog. St. Peterburg-Zerbst, 2015.
• The connection of times. 1932-1997. Artists - members of the St. Petersburg Union of Artists of Russia. Exhibition catalog. - St. Petersburg: Central Exhibition Hall "Manege", 1997.
• Humanitarian almanac "Petersburg environment", St. Petersburg, 2013

• Personal site of the artist
• Encyclopedia of St. Petersburg
• Library of fine arts
• Website about creativity and inspiration
• Site of the St. Petersburg Union of Professional Artists of the Russian Federation
• Tsarskoye Selo Newspaper
• Article by art critic N. A. Davydova
• Volksstimme
• Russian house
• Sensation Modern Fine Art Gallery London

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