March Monthly Challenge

“Still Life with Pussy Willows”
By Taisia K. Afonina
1964, Oil on canvas
80 cm × 60 cm (32 in × 24 in)

About the Art

The painting shows a table laid for tea drinking on a spring day in a Leningrad apartment mid-1960s.
One of her most famous work, Taisa Afonina painted in April 1964 at her home in Leningrad on the Zverinskaya Street 2/5 in apartment 21. Here she lived from 1952 to 1994. Set of objects in the picture is organic and natural, causing numerous associations. Composition of the painting is devoid of stage effects. It seems that the observant eye of the artist captured on canvas daily life of a bygone era. It gives the created image a special impact to the viewer. The exquisite silver composition fills us with the invisible presence of those who are dear to us and whom we will always be waiting.
The painting was exhibited in 1965 for the first time in the Spring Exhibition of Leningrad artists in the Leningrad Union of Artists.
“Still life with Pussy-Willows” has been in many shows throughout the years and printed in several publications.

Taisia Kirillovna Afonina was born May 13, 1913 in the city Nikolaev, Russian Empire, in the family of master Shipyard “Navel” (after October Revolution Shipyard named Marty).
In 1931 Taisia Afonina graduated from nine-year school in city Taganrog, and came to Leningrad to obtain art education. In 1932-1936 she engaged first in the evening classes for working youth, then in the preparatory classes at the Russian Academy of Arts.
In 1936 after preparatory classes she was adopted at the first course of Painting Department of the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where she studied of Mikhail Bernshtein, Victor Oreshnikov, Pavel Naumov.
In 1941 after the beginning the Great Patriotic war Taisia Afonina together with little son and mother evacuated first in city Ostashkov, then in city Vishniy Volochek, then in city Lugansk, Ukrain. In 1943, after the liberation of the German fascists Lugansk, Taisia Afonina involved in rebuilding the city, teaches drawing and painting in Lugansk Art school. In autumn 1943 with a group of artists Taisia Afonina rides into city Krasnodon draw club before awarding medals to parents died young heroes – members of the underground anti-fascist Komsomol organization named ″Young Guard″, which fought against the Nazis in the occupied city Krasnodon (in the Ukrainian SSR), the feat which he finds the whole country.
Later, in 1946, in the May edition of the newspaper of the Academy of Fine Arts “For the Socialist realism,” Taisa Afonina wrote: ″I saw the pit where they were dumped, the remnants of their bloody clothes, the prison where they were tortured. I talked to their mothers and girlfriends. I wanted to tell, to write about all this, of all their short heroic life″.
In 1946 Taisia Afonina graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Ilya Repin in Igor Grabar personal Art Studio of monumental painting. Her graduate work was a historical painting named “Girls of Donbass”, dedicated to the memory and heroism members of Anti-Fascist underground.
After graduation Taisia Afonina continues to work in Lugansk and returned to Leningrad in 1952 only. It Lugansk museum named Klement Voroshilov acquired as early as 1943 the first three paintings by Taisia Afonina: “The Germans came”, “Stealing in Germany”, and “Meeting”. Later her paintings purchased museums of Leningrad, Kostroma, Krasnodon, Staraya Ladoga, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
Her first participation in the Art exhibition was in 1940. Since the beginning of 1950s she was constantly involved in art exhibitions of Leningrad artists. She painted landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and genre compositions. She worked in oil painting and watercolors and was most famous as a master of landscape and still-life painting. In 1946 Taisia Afonina was admitted to the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists.
In the first years after graduation Taisia Afonin attracts military subjects and pathos revival. Later in 1950-60 she more work in genre of portrait and lyrical landscape. In 1950s she visited Ukraine, Carpathians, Meshchersky locations, where she painted a lot of studies from the life. For her works typical method of tonal painting, the interest to transfer effect of lights and plain air, and subtle coloristic relations.
Taisia Kirillovna Afonina died on April 19, 1994, in Saint Petersburg at the age of 80. Her paintings reside in Art museums and private collections throughout the world.