Nadia Rusheva’s drawings are going to Omsk

The exhibition “The World of Art in the Drawings of Nadia Rusheva” from the collect ion of National Museum of Tuva  is going to Omsk. In the first days of September, it will be shown at the State regional museum “Liberov-Centr”.

This exhibition of the drawings of the young genius-artist explores several of  Nadia Rusheva’s favorite themes. This exhibition includes 68 original works from such famous series as “Early drawings”, “Ballet, Dances”, “Tales and Fantasies”,  “Ancient World”, and ”Heroes of Literature”, which are executed in various techniques and materials. The artist’s graphics illustrate her astonishing gift – to draw from imagination.

Nadia Rusheva – that is an inimitable world of bright images, agile lines, inexhaustible imagination and delicate humor, which became embodied in more than ten thousand drawings. Her works demonstrate amazing creative intuition, her feeling for the historical epoch, and her inborn sense of rhythm and harmony. She almost never drew from nature. Her compositions were born instantaneously, without preliminaries in a clean version. “I can see them beforehands. They show up on the paper like a watermark, and all I have to do is to fill them in”, - Nadia used to say.

Nadia made many of these drawings just for herself, considering it as preparation for her future “grown-up” art. But fate decided otherwise – Nadia remained young forever. The exhibition introduces some of her first drawings, showing dancing children collecting mushrooms, self-portrait with heroes of fairy-tales. They show lines which still lack confidence, but the composition of the subjects is bright and expressive. Historical themes and types of arts are reflected in the “Queen of Saba visiting King Solomon”, “The last day of Pompeii” “Escape to Egypt”, “Dancers of Hellas”. Many of her drawings were based on themes of Russian and world literary classics.

In 1963, the young artist adopted new techniques: felt-tip pens, pastels, ink with pen, water-colors, used on various types of paper and cardboard. Nadia skillfully uses the color of the paper, for example “Ballet on ice”, and “The last day of Pompeii”.

A series of graphics, showing literary heroes in various psychological quandaries, is very interesting – “Cinderella”, “Hamlet”, “Ophelia before death”, “Richard III and Lady Anne”, “The Little Prince”,  “Princess Liza”, and many others.

Her drawings go far beyond the limits of children’s art, and even among adult artists there are far from many who could compete with the lightness of her technique, feeling for composition, the vividness of her images, and with her artistic vision of the world”, wrote academician V.A.Vatagin.

Nadia’s drawings represent a magnificent multifaceted world of images, feelings, ideas and interests. In Nadia’s work, the characteristics that are so important in an artist, selection and taste, were strict and flawless. The young artiost selected what was closest to her heart: she loved poetic myths. Many of her drawings are dedicated to mythological themes, even some of the earliest ones.

As an eight year old girl, she drew “Labors of Hercules” a whole cycle of one hundred of small studies. “Papa read to me, and I drew at the same time. Simply whatever I was feeling at the moment.”  My own attitude towards it. At first, Pushkin’s stories, and later, when I learned to read, to “Mednyi vsadnik”, “Belin’s legends” “Rusalka”, or “Bakhchisarai fountain”, Nadia used to say about her early work. (in V.K. Rushev: “Posledniy god Nadezhdy. Vospominania o moyei docheri.” {“The last year of Nadezhda. Remembrances about my daughter.”})

The thematic variety and the riches of Nadia’s creativity were boundless. She was a true hard worker, with a capital initial. Almost every book that she had read gave birth to new heroes, new ideas and the thirst to capture the newly engendered ideas on paper.  But in the series “Ballet, dances”, and “The present”, Nadia Rusheva shows  young girls dancing various folk dances of the nations of the world, and portraits of her age-mates.

Even though the exhibition “The World of Art in the Drawings of Nadia Rusheva” displays only a small fraction of the immense inheritance of the young artist, it completely represents her art. It is, as a matter of fact, an “exchange exhibition”. At a later date, the exhibition “Young Siberians”, a vernisage of unique graphics, will be brought to Kyzyl from Omsk.