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Events
  • THE MAGIC FAIRY-TALE OF ANASTASIA ARKHIPOVA

Any child gets acquainted with art and painting through illustrations found in children’s books. March 1 – April 4, "Magnezit" Museum will exhibit pictures of a famous Russian illustrator Anastasia Arkhipova. Visitors will see  known to many watercolor paintings to the fairy-tales of  Hans Christian Andersen, Grimm brothers, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and others.

Anastasia Ivanovna is a Distinguished Artist of the Russian Federation, Corresponding Member of the Russian Art Academy, a world-famous illustrator. She made her debut with "the Lane to the Mountains" by Gurgen Gabrielan published by "Children Literature publishing house". The same year of 1977, a small-size book of "The Princess and the Pea" was issued with the edition unbelievably huge for a young artist – 5,000,000 copies. Already in the early period of her professional activities Anastasia Ivanovna was enchanted with the world of the fairy-tale, especially with the heritage of the famous Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. For many of us, these wonderful paintings will always remain a part of childhood: "The Tinderbox", "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", "The Little Tiny", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Match Girl" and many others.

Success of the artist was also noticed at the international art scene. In 1985, director of "Schreiber Verlag", German publishing house, had illustrations of the "Happy Hans", a fairy-tale of Grimm brothers, made by Arkhipova. Since that time, creativity of the artist became especially popular both in Russia and abroad. Books with her illustrations have been published in Brazil, USA, Korea, China and European countries.

Recently, Anastasia Ivanovna has been judging international and Russian contests, participated in international congresses, worked as the organizer of the "Book Image" National Contest, as the member of the Executive Committee of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY).

Anastasia Arkhipova creates her miniature paintings using the classical watercolor technique, that is, allows the paint to dry and elaborates the second layer, and so on, getting back to the details creating multi-tiered, multi-colored watercolor paintings. According to Anastasia Ivanovna, this technique enables creating a complicated, extremely fine image. In her creative process, she spends most part of time studying characters, writers themselves, plunging into the epoch they worked in. This painstaking labor results in the unique image penetrated with the tender attitude to the characters, love and attention to detail, lines and context. The artist becomes the writer’s co-author creating her visual world for readers. The magic world of Anastasia Arkhipova presented the fairy-tale to many generations who safely keep in mind the images of favorite characters she had created.

Photo by Vasily Maximov.