Nina Kogan
Nina Kogan (1887–1942) was a Russian painter known for her Suprematist works.
Life and career
Nina Osipovna (Iosifovna) Kogan was born in 1887 or 1889 in Vitebsk, Saint Petersburg,[1] or Moscow,[2] and studied at the St. Ekaterina School in St. Petersburg in 1911–1913.[1][3] In 1919 she helped to organize City Museum in Petrograd.[1] She went on to study at the People's Art School in Vitebsk, Belarus, and soon became a teacher there, together with Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, and Kazimir Malevich.[1]
Kogan became a member of Malevich's UNOVIS art collective.[1] While a member of the group, she created the work Suprematist Ballet in an attempt to animate Suprematist forms and ideas in dance.[4][5] She also took part designing new version of futuristic opera Victory over the Sun.[1] Kogan participated in on several exhibitions of early 1920s, such as "Erste Russische Kunstausstellung" in Berlin, 1922; "Exhibition of Works by Women Artists" in Leningrad, 1936; the "Sixth Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists", Leningrad, 1940; and the "Seventh Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists", Leningrad, 1941.[1]
In 1922 Kogan married artist Anatoly Borisov. In 1922-23 she was a consultant in one of the Moscow's museums. Since 1928 she worked as children's books illustrator; she did not work in Suprematism after Vitebsk.[2]
Kogan died in 1942 in Leningrad, during the Siege of Leningrad.[3][2]
Legacy
In the 1980s a large number of works attributed to her appeared on the European art market.[3][6]
Her works are in collections of the Seattle Art Museum and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.[7]
Australian poet Clive James wrote a poem about Kogan, titled "Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven":[8]
Two of her little pictures grace my walls:
Suprematism in a special sense,
With all the usual bits and pieces flying
Through space, but carrying a pastel-tinged
Delicacy to lighten the strict forms
Of that hard school and blow them all sky-high,
Splinters and stoppers from the bombing of
An angel’s boudoir.
Gallery
Composition 1920
Suprematist Composition, 1921
Suprematist Composition, 1921
Suprematist Composition, 1921
Suprematist Composition, 1921-1923
Suprematist ballet, Unovis almanach, 1920
Further reading
- Shatskikh, Aleksandra Semenovna (2007). Vitebsk: The Life of Art. ISBN 978-0300101089.
References
- Misler, Nicoletta (1 January 1995). "Nina Kogan". Experiment. 1 (1): 241–250. doi:10.1163/2211730X-00101018. ISSN 1084-4945. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
- "Коган Нина Иосифовна. Галерея — реализация картин в Санкт-Петербурге". oph-art.ru. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
- "The Faking of the Russian Avant-Garde". July 2009.
- Townsend, Christopher; Trott, Alexandra; Davies, Rhys (21 October 2014). Across the Great Divide: Modernism's Intermedialities, from Futurism to Fluxus. ISBN 9781443870207.
- "New art for the new world – Celebrating the UNOVIS Collective at 100".
- New Left Review. New Left Review Limited. 2004.
- "Titel saknas". sis.modernamuseet.se. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
- James, Clive. "Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven". Clive james. Retrieved 25 October 2022.