Girl with a garland in her hair
Belashova, Ekaterina Fyodorovna
1906 - 1971
Girl with a garland in her hair
Bronze
1m 47cm high
1949
PROVENANCE:
Private Collection, Moscow
LITERATURE:
Certificate Luidmilla Martz, Curator of Sculpture at Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Girl with a garland in her hair shows a girl, lefe size, balncing contaposto with her weight being taken by her left leg. Her right foot is just lefting of the ground as she prepares to move forward. She leans to her left while both hands adjust a garland of leaves or flowers in her hair. The gilrs expression is wistful and she gazes into the unknown lost in her own thoughts. Belashova, a pupil of Alexander Matveev, and one of the most shilled of the Soviet sculptors, captures a feeling of the young girls energy and cleverly captures the weight distribution down the girls left hand side.
Bronze was very expensive after the war, particlularly for a sculpture of this size, but Belashova was teaching at the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Art at this date, which must have allowed access to a sufficeient qauntity of the metal.
Belashova c 1925.
Belashova was born Nov. 19 (Dec. 2), 1906, in St. Petersburg. She became a Soviet sculptor, People’s Artist of the USSR (1963), corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1964) and a member of the CPSU from 1945.
Belashova with her student work in 1926
Belashova studied at the Leningrad State Higher Arts and Technical Institute (1926–32) under R. R. Bakh, V. V. Lishev, V. L. Simonov, and A. T. Matveev. From 1942 to 1952 she taught at the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Art, and from 1952 to 1965 she was a professor at the Moscow College of Art and Industry. From 1957 to 1968, Belashova was the secretary, and from 1968, she was the chairwoman of the administrative board of the Artists’ Union of the USSR. She worked primarily in pedestal sculpture.
Belashova’s works include a portrait of S. A. Dobroliubov (plaster of paris, 1942; bronze, 1965; Directorate of Exhibitions of the Artists’ Union of the USSR),The Unvanquished Woman (plaster of paris, 1943; bronze, 1957; Tret’iakov Gallery), Portrait of An Old Man (plaster of paris, 1944; bronze, 1960; Tret’iakov Gallery), Reclining Little Girl (plaster of paris, 1947; bronze, 1958; Kiev Museum of Russian Art), The Dream (marble, 1957–58; Tret’iakov Gallery), a monument to A. S. Pushkin in the Pushkin Hills of Pskov Oblast (bronze; unveiled in 1959), a portrait of N. K. Krupskaia (bronze, 1959; Kuibyshev Art Museum), A. S. Pushkin in 1837 (1964, bronze; Ministry of Culture of the USSR), My Dear Girl (1964, bronze; Ministry of Culture of the USSR), The Awakening (marble, 1967; Perm Art Gallery), Chopin (bronze, 1968; Chopin Museum, Warsaw; marble, 1969), and a project for a monument to N. K. Krupskaia in Moscow (plaster of paris, 1970; Ministry of Culture of the USSR).
Belashova won the State Prize in 1967 and was also awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, and a variety of medals.
References.
Fedorov, B. E. F. Belashova. [Album.] Moscow, [1966].
