Curatorial project: "Petrov-Vodkin's Circle"

Painter, theatrical designer, portraitist, author of philosophical and allegorical compositions. Grand-nephew of the poet Mikhail Lermontov. Born to an educated noble family: her grandfather Vladimir Nikolaevich was a general, hero of the Patriotic War of 1812; her father Vladimir Vladimirovich was an experimental physicist and popularizer of science, engaged in physical bases of photo process, author of more than fifty articles on experimental physics devices for the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary, helped to organise the Physical Society at St Petersburg University.

She attended classes in the Philological Department, Higher Women’s (Bestuzhev) courses (1902–1907); at the same time studied at the School of Drawing, Society for the Encouragement of Arts, in Dmitry Kardovsky’s studio (1905); under Léon Bakst at Elizaveta Zvantseva’s School of Art (1907–1910) and the Institute of the History of Arts (1918). Contributed to exhibitions (from 1911). Contributed to the exhibitions of the World of Art (1911, 1912, 1916, 1917), Union of Youth (1912–1913), 1915 (Mos – cow, 1915), New Society of Artists (1917), Russian Landscape (Petrograd, 1918–1919), Theatrical and Decorative Art in the USSR. 1917–1927 (Lenin – grad, 1927).

In 1910, she helped Kuzma Petrov- Vodkin, Alexander Blaznov and Nikolai Tyrsa to paint St Basil’s Church reconstructed by Alexei Shchusev. She wrote poetry and prose, drew for the magazine Bohemia, designed performances for the Petrograd Puppet Theatre, illustrated works by Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.