Smirnoff Veronica

"I strive to create a personal, but at the same time well-known, intricate folklore reality filled with meaning in its "blue sky", despite the mythical and practical shortcomings."

Veronica Smirnoff is a British artist of Russian origin (born in Moscow, Russia, 1979). She received a bachelor's degree from the Slade School of Art and a postgraduate diploma from the Royal Academy of Arts. She held her first solo exhibition at the Riccardo Crespi Gallery in Milan (2008). Smirnoff has exhibited in Moscow, Paris, Berlin, New York and London. She was selected to participate in the John Moores Painting Prize UK (2010). She lives and works in London.

Constantly rethinking and referring to the Renaissance and iconography, folklore and Asian traditions, the paintings are built using traditional elements - the fragility of gesso and the hardness of wood, with pigment ground from semiprecious stones mixed with egg yolk and wine to make paints. Wooden support boards are made of oak in Russian monasteries and consecrated. Layer by layer, the surface is covered with texture, and then sanded to a sedimentary surface. Smirnoff is fascinated by the idea of an "icon" as an object of worship and its close connection with "folk art" with a wide repertoire of signs: flat modeling of figures, conditional space and abstract color effects.

"Everyone loves good stories — this childhood feeling is deeply ingrained in our collective memory. It awakens the ancient instinct of elementary surprise and amazement that we once possessed. As in a good story, seeing is always forbidden. Everything amazing depends on one thing that is hidden. It harbors a potential drama in terms of imagery, when the eye slowly opens and creates meaning. The details are hidden, but important.

Working with egg tempera on wood, one of the oldest and most refined techniques, I use elements of icon painting and painting of the early Renaissance, Asian traditions and folk art, as well as modern cultural references. This particular visual language is partly imbued with my Slavic roots, but it is obviously inspired by other sources as well — I take materials, symbols, ideas and gestures from many sources and rethink them in the process of transforming painting. In a way, I use this process to give meaning and significance to my stories, constantly exploring and rethinking the images both from the outside and from the inside.

The egg tempera technique plays a key role in its methodology, working with its texture and fluidity, leaving vast expanses of color layers and brush strokes to their fate when drying horizontally. As if by magic, the surface becomes permeable, and the intricate detailing in some places is designed to emphasize the dialogue between abstraction and figurativeness, allegory and materialization.

I create drawings from tiny dots or thick contours, and then, following the technique of the old masters, transfer the images to a primed board. Ideas arise from free sketches, special sensations from the surrounding world, from recordings of impressions, which leads to a combination of different registers and the mutual arrangement of objects, the flat formation of surfaces and the distortion of perspectives. There is a deliberate contradiction between how much I recognize the original and how much I am guided by pure intuition, when traditional observations and approximations connect disparate images together and turn them into open narratives with their inner logic and eternal hope for the blue sky ahead."

Veronica Smirnoff, artist

EDUCATION:

2004-2007 — Royal Academy of Arts - Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art
1999-2004 — Slade School of Fine Art, UCL - BA in Fine Art with 1st Class Honours
1998 -1999 — Wimbledon School of Art - BTEC Foundation Diploma in Fine Art and Design

PRIZES, SCHOLARSHIPS AND AWARDS:

2006 — Alumni Award, Royal Academy of Arts
2005 — Boundary Prize
2004 — Terence Cuneo Prize in Fine Art
2003 — Rodney Burn Prize in Fine Art
2001-2002 — Scholarship to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna

SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

2024 — BlueSky Red, Candida Stevens Gallery, London
2018 — Tales of Bright and Brittle, Riccardo Crespi Gallery, Milan
2017 — The Greater and Lesser Ways, Jessica Carlisle, London
2013 — Beyond The Shore, Riccardo Crespi Gallery, Milan
2012 — The Madding Spring, Vela Gallery, London
2010 — Zhar, Stanislas Bourgain Gallery, Paris
2008 — Morozka, Riccardo Crespi Gallery, Milan

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS:

2025 — Fair |catalog| November, a—s—t—r—a Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2024 — Bryan O'Sullivan Collection, London
2023 — Candida Stevens, Chichester
2023 — If you could save one place, London Art Fair, London
2022 — Hologram, Wall Art Gallery, Miami
2022 — Place-Place, Candida Stevens Gallery, London
2022 — Manana Incierto, Bilbao
2022 — Manana Incierto, London
2022 — Dream Baby Dream, Venice
2021 — PAW, Palermo
2021 — Art Moscow, Moscow
2019 — Heat, 58th Venice Biennale, Venice
2019 — Walking Dream, MiArt, Milan
2018 — Painting Now 2, Riccardo Crespi Gallery, Milan
2016 — Sting & Trudie Styler: The Composition of a Christie's Collection, London
2015 — Painting Now, Riccardo Crespi Gallery, Milan
2014 — "Future Worlds", Erarta Gallery, London Walls, Pushkin House, London FROWARD, Eton College, Eton Renewal of the Sacred, House of the Nobleman, London
2014 — "The Future can Wait", Saatchi Gallery and the New Sensations program on Channel 4, London
2013 — "Everywhere, except now", 4th Thessaloniki Biennale, Greek Museum of Modern Art, Thessaloniki
2012 — "Dreaming Beauties", Riccardo Crespi Gallery, Milan
2012 — Opulant Vision, Group Exhibition, FORD Projects Gallery, New York
2011 — "The Return", "The Nobleman's House", London Allegory, Salon Vert Gallery, London
2010 — John Moores Prize in Painting, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
2010 — BRIC Themed Auction, Saatchi Gallery, London
2009 — "Women Worth Watching", Christie's, London
2009 — Self-portrait of a lady, Riccardo Crespi Gallery, Milan
2009 — RA Sotheby's Auction, London Society of Modern Art, Gothic Auction, Sotheby's, London
2008 — RXArt, "Invasion/Evasion in New York", Baibakov Art Projects, Moscow
2008 — Sotheby's Charity Auction, London 2008 — Royal Academy of Arts, London
2008 — Transferred as Present, York Art Gallery, York
2007 — The End Begins: The Lodeveans Collection, The Hospital Gallery, London; Royal Academy of Arts, London MiArt Fair, Milan
2006 — TGU, Zoo Art Fair, London Lenin Lovers, CuratorSpace Gallery, London Premiums, Royal Academy of Arts, London
2005 — TGU, Zoo Art Fair, London Baroquerocks, Espace Brochage Express, Paris Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow
2004 — 18-45, Tascheles Gallery, Berlin