Svetlana Katkova

The painter, monumentalist artist, and ceramicist Svetlana Katkova was born in the village of Androsovka, Kuibyshev (now Samara) region where her mother was evacuated due to the outbreak of World War II. Katkova was the daughter of Sergey Katkov (1911–1976), a prominent artist and educator, who after the war taught many accomplished Belarusian artists, sculptors, and architects. In 1961, Katkova graduated from the Minsk Art College (now the Aleksei Glebov Minsk State Art College); she then attended the Belarusian State Theater and Art Institute (now the Belarusian State Academy of Arts), graduating in 1967. Her teachers included Algerd Maliszewski (1922–1989), Georgy (George) Poplavsky (1931–2017), and Aleksandr Kishchenko (1933–1997). Katkova began her professional artistic career in 1964, and since then, her work has been exhibited in many republican and international exhibitions. In 1968, she started working at the Minsk Art and Production Kombinat, and in 1970, she became a member of the Soviet Belarusian Artists’ Union. 

While Katkova’s early work is rooted in the traditions of Soviet socialist realist art, her later art rejects the dominant style, drawing inspiration from folk art and reinterpreting it within the traditions of modernism. Her expressive color palette and understanding of color align her distinctive creative vision with the art of the fauves. In her practice, Katkova quickly overcame ideological canons, choosing instead to focus on an individual and intimate perception of reality. Throughout her life, she worked extensively in easel painting in the genres of narrative painting, landscape, and still life, and she also produced graphic works. In addition, Katkova has a prolific output in monumental and decorative applied arts.

A significant part of Katkova’s creative career took place during the Soviet period. She and other artists worked under conditions dictated by the dominant communist ideology and were thus forced to participate in state-funded projects in order to not be marginalized and have the opportunity to present their work to the public. In 1978, Katkova painted the canvas Green May. Victory for an exhibition dedicated to the anniversary of victory in World War II. Going beyond the official pathos of the event, Katkova chose the intimate genre of still life. The subject of this work is elemental: on a brilliant blood-red table is a row of vases holding stylized bouquets of flowers. Throughout, the palette is reduced to the contrast of vibrant red against greens and blues. In the foreground, the red plane of a table is tipped toward us, seemingly in a reverse perspective borrowed from abstract art. The flowers resemble colorful, shimmering clouds in elegant tones of red and blue with green. Her confidently painted vases have modeling and shiny surfaces, but they do not cast shadows; they seem to be cut out and floating. Behind the still life in the foreground is an emerald-green field that completely fills the upper third of the canvas. At the very top, Katkova represents Minsk’s cityscape with the image of the iconic opera house building recognizable against the backdrop of a sky illuminated by colorful stripes of festive fireworks. Immediately after the exhibition, this work was acquired by the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus and is now part of its permanent collection.

Still life was Katkova’s preferred painting genre—usually, she painted her own everyday surroundings. Her studio resembled a collector’s space, filled with objects of East and Central Asian decorative arts, Belarusian folk art, and numerous souvenirs and artworks brought back from her travels and residencies. Objects as diverse as Central Asian carpets, Japanese kimonos, and peacock-feathered fans served as Katkova’s inspiration for the whimsical backgrounds in her works. Her still lifes are mostly titled after the main compositional element. Her 1999 painting Irises is representative of Katkova’s approach to still life: the framing centers on large flowers, which are surrounded by a dynamic arrangement of shells, crystal vessels, a porcelain teapot, and a table clock. The stylization of form and the color relationship in the work are reminiscent of stained glass. Katkova is not interested in creating a sense of depth or relief through the use of chiaroscuro; instead, she uses delicate, almost watercolor-like glazes that create a calm, ephemeral space devoid of drama yet filled with a quiet, joyful harmony. The barely discernible stylized female figure adds a sense of lyricism to the work and suggests an idea of an otherworldly presence or reflection. The effect of timelessness is enhanced by the blind face of the clock, which is missing hands.

A special place in Katkova’s biography is occupied by her long-standing friendship and creative partnership with the Belarusian artist Zoya Litvinova, which began during their student years. Their first monumental work together was the mural Science and Man, executed in 1971 for the Scientific Research Institute of Technical Cybernetics in Minsk. In 1976, together with Litvinova, Katkova painted a mural in the Vilnius cinema in Minsk. The panel Old and New Vilnius, measuring 6 by 12 meters, was executed in encaustic. Their third significant joint project was the tempera mural My Homeland, created in 1978 for the Railway Workers’ Palace in Minsk. Unfortunately, none of these three works has survived to the present day. Katkova also often modeled for Litvinova. In a series of painted and graphic portraits by the latter, Katkova appears in Madonna, Peasant Woman, Pagan Goddess, and even A Georgian Boy. Katkova named her only daughter, who later became an artist herself, Zoya, in honor of her friend.

In addition to the monumental projects realized in collaboration with Litvinova and mentioned above, Katkova created a series of independent works in various applied techniques. Her monumentalist paintings are characterized by their allegorical imagery and clarity of color. Her early works included a study for the mural the Ivan Kupala Festival produced for the Yanka Kupala Belarusian State Academic Theater (1967) and a ceramic relief made for the House Museum of the First Congress of the RSDLP (1968). Later, Katkova participated in designing the decorative programs of restaurants such as Planeta (1980) and Green Meadow (1981) in Minsk, various public and cultural buildings in Slutsk, and the industrial settlement of Mikashevichi. In 2010, she was awarded the State Prize of Belarus for her project for the Memorial Complex in the village of Čyrvony Berag (Krasny Bereg) in the Zhlobin district, where she transformed children’s drawings into stained glass. The memorial is dedicated to child victims of World War II.

In the last decades of her life, Katkova preferred working in her home studio. She led a quiet, almost reclusive lifestyle, allowing only an intimate circle of friends into her world. She lived most of her life in Minsk, and it was there that she passed away on December 20, 2020. In 2021, the National Art Museum of the Republic of Belarus in Minsk hosted a major posthumous retrospective of Katkova’s work, offering viewers a rare opportunity to immerse themselves in the full lyrical resonances of the artist’s unique hermetic cosmos.

Alexey Lunev

Photo portrait: Svetlana Katkova (2007) by N. Botvinnik. From Svetlana Katkova. Zhivopis, grafika, dekorativno-prikladnoye iskusstvo [Painting, graphics, decorative and applied arts], ed. V. Stepanenko (Minsk: Альтиора Форте [Altiora Forte], 2017), cover.