Nina Vetrova was born in Kiev. She graduated from the Kiev State Schevchenko University with a bachelor degree in Russian Language, and master degree in Russian Philology. In 1993 she married Martin C. Robinson, and moved to USA. Nina started her artistic career in 2001. As an artist Nina feels strong connection to both the Russian and Ukrainian cultures. Her first personal one-day show took place in 2003 in Cedar-Rapids, Iowa. In 2004 from October 22nd to November 24th in the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kiev, was held the exhibition "Avant-garde Adventures" which displayed twenty-four of her paintings. In 2005 she was included in the Modern Encyclopedia of Ukraine*: "The art of Vetrova-Robinson is based on tradition of the Ukrainian and Russian Avant-Garde, in the begining of the 20th century. The lexicon and phraseology of Cubofuturism and Suprematism was incorportated into the context of the modern art explorations." In the same year, together with the American artist Dena Tollefson, she organized the union of Avant-garde artists "DNA". One can also find her works in: the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU), in The Institute of Modern Russian Culture, in private collections of Ukraine, Russia, the US and Switzerland. She is the granddaughter of Vadym Meller and Nina Genke-Meller.
*Modern Encyclopedia of Ukraine (2005, Kiev, Ukraine) Volume IV, pp. 363, G.F. Kovalenko, Example of work; page 334.
"The Game Has Begun”* G.F. Kovalenko
It does not often happen that a young artist consciously and decisively chooses an art form that has been separated from her for decades. The reason for her choice is neither to follow post-modernism nor to use the widely used method — "citation" — and even not to demonstrate her own artistic acumen. And, of course, it is not to express highlights of her autobiography, though that personal history be significant and serious. She can emphasize this and be proud of her family history. Nina Vetrova-Robinson's grandparents (grandfather Vadim Meller and grandmother Nina Genke) made the most important strides in Ukrainian Avant-garde movement and created milestones in this form of art.
It is difficult to determine the reason this happened. It is possible that her home atmosphere and art on the walls helped to develop a certain passion for this form of artistic expression, and made a clear conviction that the avant-garde art form at the beginning of the 20th century had not become an object of the past, or a mysterious and tempting page in history that had already been turned.
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| "Blue, Red, White" (2001) Suprematic composition 18" x 20", acrylic on canvas |
Incidentally — while in the past years, when Ukranian and Russian Avant-garde with envious regularity, festively, demonstrates itself in many countries and continents around the world, when its mission has already been acknowledged and accepted as very special in establishing the language of art of the 20th century, while tens of monographs and hundreds of research works are dedicated to this art form — there are very few that remember that this form of art was cut off and suffocated exactly at the moment when it was still far from complete, with the majority of its most important ideas not yet extrapolated to their end.
One can say with all certainty that Vetrova-Robinson had a feeling of the unfulfilled and incompleteness of Avant-garde and sensed its "stopping in mid-stride" (E.F. Khovtun). I may say that despite all circumstances, even certain factors of history, the Avant-garde movement was not dead, but in a deep slumber, needing to be revived.
The first thing that you notice in examining Vetrova-Robinson's works is her thinking in cycles/series. This kind of thinking has the absolute Avant-garde nature that first started in classic Avant-garde. It is one of distinguishing sign of that art form. I want to point to one moment: most cycles done by artists are Art about Art. Especially important: she is not trying to eliminate the element of time from her work — the time that separates us from 1910-1920s. She does not try to pretend that she is outside that time itself. She cannot ignore that time as if nothing has happened and there were never long tragic years interceding.
Art about Art is something very special — it is a play of reflections, a play of similarities. Art that is based on phraseology and lexicology of suprematism always follows these rules of engagement. The author has no intention to finish something unfinished, to continue or complete the interrupted monologue of someone else famous. This art is not a missionary art, not a first discovery. It immediately makes a clear statement by choosing its lexicon, character and construction of forms.
The artistic and spiritual bases of suprematism do not limit Vetrova-Robinson by any means — she is the artist of another era and another style. She understands the universality and formularity of the majority of suprematic discoveries, but in her own works she is very fast — as if she opens the parentheses of the established norms and lets in some particular cases. These cases are not exceptions, but something to which her predecessors never paid close attention. In other words, the artist breaks the Avant-garde's impermeability and brings some stipulation in its gnomical sentences. It is as if the stipulations are made by accident and not with the purpose of changing the contents of or oppose the main forms. These stipulations bring life, emotions, and most important — the unconstraint of her works. They do not limit and depreciate the classic standards. With these Vetrova-Robinson creates a stunning effect: she is dedicated to the universal suprematic form and simply surrounds these forms with her own expressions. She avoids any fixed ideas and obsessions, but she adds more color and more shades, so you can see something that you could not notice before. This is her way to visualize the existing theories.
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| "Cuckoo Nest" (2001) 22" x 28", acrylic on canvas |
To put it simply, we may associate the suprematic classics with treatise, while Vetrova-Robinson's suprematism we may associate with plastic essay.
The foreground of Vetrova-Robinson's plastic essays (my term for Nina's art) is the beauty and emotion of the rational constructions, which she first discovers for herself and then brings this discovery to her audience. The rational expression bears a hidden element that the game has begun, with the ability of structures to transform endlessly.
There is no reason for dispute: All of this is confirmed in the creation of classical suprematism, but foremost in them is the idea, the hypothesis, formula, and law. In this case the artist clearly offers something different. Her interest, as said before, is the game. And she bravely involves her viewer in that game.
In truth, it is very curious to observe how each suprematic motif searches itself, and how assuredly it breaks its own note into the melody of a completely separate motif: either fighting it, or giving in to it. The artist's chief concern lies in the distinct link of each suprematic form: how concrete each is and how the latter form to this link subsides; or others, becoming absolutely independent from everything and all.
What would occur if the suprematistic form was put, so to say, in an unsuprematic environment (Vetrova-Robinson's "Seven From Seven" Series). How suprematism give color limits to the forms ("Black-Blue series"). What the spatial life of the suprematic form is. Dimension and flatness in suprematism. Suprematic composition and background in which, itself, is realized. And etc. etc.
If the viewer was to see or think of one individual painting out of a suprematic series, it may seem a mere smile of gratification, or even a sincere and touching confession of love towards suprematism. But when one recognizes the series as a whole, one begins to understand that in them is performed some suprematic ritual, some suprematic mystery drama. It seems this kind of behavior can only continue on, without rendering its hypnosis.
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| "Farmer's House" (2003) 24" x 30", acrylic on canvas |
The suprematic series is one of the many pictorial series made by Vetrova-Robinson. In others, she's no less artistic or consistent. But, in all fairness, we should note that as the artist works with a completely singular system of plastics, speaking in a completely different language of plastics, she still revives the concept of suprematism. This could be only a suprematic citation, a mere hint, or the opposite: a reinvented suprematic phrase. Conclusively, the artist is interested in everything: pre-suprematism, cubofuturistic, Avant-garde and post-suprematic effects.
Throughout the works, which in cubofuturism one could call "Coloristic Dynamics," the artist attracts the extreme situation, when the cubofuturistic construction is at its peak tension and forms near to the limit: in the instant, structure dismantles, and forms take off into a free-fall. In these works much is interesting: foremost, deformation of the elements; the overcoming of flatness; the liberation from centrifugal construction; the re-attainment and liberation from the masses, independent from gravitational flatness.
Again, it bears repeating: the series, like the suprematic series, are free from any type of archaism, and in no way disguise themselves under beginning-of-the-century craftsmanship — in them everything is born anew. These series are created by the absolutely modern artist who has a deep compassion and feeling for the art of the past and does not want to disguise these feelings.
Along with suprematism, another attribute of Vetrova-Robinson's works is organic Russian abstraction. The artist's organic series demonstrate the concept of object-without object ("Autumn in Iowa", "Farmer's House", "Cuckoo Bird's Nest" etc). In his time, Michael Matychin wrote of the principles of this type of object-without object craftsmanship; more importantly, not so much of principles as of her stimulating impulses: Nature says to us, "Don't imitate me, depict me. Make me like yourselves. Learn from my creation. Look on me in a way you've never looked at me." Observing, you will notice the previous forms disappearing.
All architecture of the organic series is based on natural forms: its growth and development is visual, it transforms into a structure and you can no longer ignore its natural origin. There is no more geometrical abstraction, no more right angle geometry (one of the main principles of the avant-garde). Everything obeys the laws of nature, its rhythm, the law of consonance and contrast of colors.
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| "Montana in the Summer" (2005), 24" x 30" acrylic on canvas |
The completeness of the artist's vision provide for the natural organic unity of her works — there are no separate parts you need summarize. The artist does not suggest her own layout or chart to unite the forms. She is using the organic unity of nature, which combines light and color, line and flatness, volume and form into one. Nothing is in existence by itself, but is a part of one wholeness, correlated and descended from all forms, colors and rhythms. One cannot stop or interrupt the processes of interaction, penetration and rooting that are permanent on all levels everywhere.
There is no independent space; all forms interact. All forms are a manifestation of the infinity of space. The space is the substance characterized by its own movement, development and "growth". That explains the stunning effect of Vetrova-Robinson's organic series — the effect of birth, the birth of the form. I want to stress that in this series the forms are NOT CONSTRUCTED, but are BEING BORN.
It is needless to repeat that the genesis of Vetrova-Robinson's art is obvious — it is Ukranian and Russian Avant-garde. At the same time, when you think of her organic series you can not deny her American life experience. In American abstract arts the organic line is very expressive and very semantic. It starts with Georgia O'Keefe and Archilla Gorki and many others. This brought the post-war abstract expressionism to life. But that is another chapter.
In conclusion, I would like to summarize my thoughts: Nina Vetrova-Robinson's art openly and easily through the Avant-garde images entered the inexhaustible Avant-garde world. Her art is kind of a reminder that in spite of all doctrines, conceptions, ideas and norms, in spite of the rigid rules and in spite of its devoted beginning, the Avant-garde art is a "...flight of your soul**".
G.F. Kovalenko
Doctor of Fine Arts,
Professor Emeritus and Head of Department
Moscow Institute of Art Theory and History
Moscow, Russia,
February 2004
*Article taken from the catalog from the exhibition “Avant-Garde Adventures”, National Art Museum of Ukraine, (NAMU), Kiev, 2004
**From the poem "Eugeni Onegin" by A.S. Pushkin
Translation: Sveta Selby
| E-mail: | ninavetrova (at) mchsi.com |