Natalya Nesterova: Reflections of Time Past

The advent of Perestroika and the transformation of the Soviet Union hailed a new dawn of social and political order, alternative philosophies and individual freedoms. Amidst this world of rapid cultural change, transition and ambiguities emerged an illuminee and maverick, Natalya Nesterova, whose works have remained decidedly focalized in imaginative capacity with its reactionary nostalgia of an ideal past; works void of politic and aesthetic rhetoric that provide contemplative sanctuary with their didactic imagery. It is not surprising that national recognition has followed in the steps of the muscovite who is an Academician and an Honorary Artist of Russia. She received the National Award in Fine Arts, the Triumph Award and the Gold Medal of the Academy of Fine Arts. Her artistic accomplishments have crossed the social and cultural borders of global pluralism. In 1988, she captured the attention of Sotheby’s whose debut of the then unfamiliar and unconventional Russian notable served as a catalyst for the beginning of a propitious and protracted western interest. Nesterova has been nationally and internationally featured in over sixty solo and collaborative exhibitions and remains part of the permanent collections of the world’s most recognized museums including Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg; The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow; The Jewish Museum, New York; and National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.

Alexandre Gertsman, Editor, is Founder and President of INTART—International Foundation of Russian and Eastern European Art in New York—is unequivocally acknowledged as an accomplished, independent curator and savant of Russian contemporary art who has successfully orchestrated a numerous selection of traveling museum exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, and Russia; editing and contributing to several books and exhibition catalogues and publications both nationally and internationally; and a frequent correspondent of art magazines and newspapers. Widely praised as a lecturer au courant, Alexandre Gertsman has moderated symposia and provided principal discourse on contemporary Russian art at various universities and museums across the United States. Mr. Gertsman is Founder and President of The American Friends of the Tretyakov Gallery since 2002.