Elizaveta Aleksandrova. Interview

The Author says:

"I was born in Leningrad in 1930. My parents were painters, and from early age I was surrounded by art: the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, music, art exhibitions... Many art exhibitions

My parents sent me to a preparatory classes taught by K.M. Lepilov at the art high school of the Academy of Art. He later would die a horrible death during the Siege of Leningrad. War always destroys; it never creates anything. It did not pass me by, either: the closest, most beloved people in my life died of starvation in my arms. In 1944 the Academy, which had been evacuated, returned to Leningrad, and my school came back, too.

It was hard for me to return into the rhythm of school. I hardly knew that they wanted from me and was getting along with «C’s» mostly. Later I applied and was admitted to the Academy of Art. Professors back then were all of the traditional academic school; for example, L.F. Ovsiannikov, a disciple of Chistiakov. He helped to develop my drawing skills. I am grateful to him.

However, not everything in the Academy was to my liking: for example, color, space, dependence on space. To avoid the things I did not like I engaged with the graphic form, with drawing, even though I understood all too well that there could be no art without space. I was confused; I sought my way, stumbling and falling. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, a great thing happened: I met V.V. Sterligov. Everything I was looking for I found in his teachings. He led us, his students, along the path paved by Kazimir Malevich, whose student he himself had been. We moved from Impressionism to Cezannism, then to Cubism—through all its stages. Then there was Sterligov’s spatial system, «Bowl-Dome,» which he found within and derived from nature—a form that led to spiritual perception.

Vladimir Sterligov could not imagine art without God. Unfortunately, it took me a long time to understand that; purity, conscience, honesty—all these are a part of God in us. All that is personal and superficial distorts a work of art. We are the matter but we came here not to reproduce more matter, but to give it form.

«In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep... and God divided the light from the darkness» (from the Book of Genesis). He separated, divided, partitioned, purified: this is the beginning of the Divine act of creation. «He had to separate form, otherwise our creative world would collapse as a formless mass, on which does not yet rest the grace of God»(Karel Capek).

Form should be perfect, so that there is no room left for anything else: neither for individualism, nor ambition nor even oneself, one’s personality. Lord, grants this to all of us, and me first and foremost."

Elizaveta Alexandrova

(“the Dynasty of Alexander's". - Velikiy Novgorod. 2013)