OSTROUMOVA-LEBEDEVA Anna Petrovna

Russian and Soviet painter and graphic artist.

Born in St.-Petersburg into the family of a prominent Synod servant, she took up drawing at the age of 14 and attended evening drawing classes at baron Stieglitz’ school. Enrolling at the Arts School in 1889, she started at Vasily Mathe’s engraving studio, but quit it 2 months later to join the general painting class. She entered the Arts Academy in 1892 - the year women enrollment was allowed – where she studied under Ilya Repin, Pavel Chistyakov and Vasily Mathe. Experimenting with wood engraving, she started to use colour and printing from different plates. In 1898, she went to Paris where she studied under Fernando. Colarossi and James Whistler. Experimenting in xylography, she started to use colour and print from different plates. She considered revival of colour xylography to be the cause of her life. She joined the Mir Iskusstva [“The World of Art”] association in 1900 and a year later, at Sergey Dyagilev’s commission, produced the first series of ten prints of St. Petersburg views.

She worked in all drawing and painting genres – still lifes, portraits, scenes, but most of her prints are dedicated to urban landscapes, or cityscapes, – primarily those of St. Petersburg. Her extensive European travels took her to Italy (1903 and 1906), France (1906), Germany (1911), the Netherlands (1913), Belgium (1913) and Spain (1913). She created book graphic design and illustrations and collaborated with the Zhupel [“Bogey”] magazine (1905), illustrated “St. Petersburg” by Vladimir Kurbatov (1912) and “The Soul of St. Petersburg” by Nikolay Antsyfarov (1920). After the October 1917 revolution, she became a member of the Narcompros (People’s Commissariat for Education) Expert Panel. She taught at the Higher Institute for Photography and Photographic Technique and, in 1924, joined the Chetyre Iskusstva [Four Arts] Association. She created “St. Petersburg”, a lithographic prints album, and “Pavlovsk”, a woodcut series. 

In 1934 she started teaching at the Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. She remained in Leningrad during the World War II siege of the city known as the Leningrad Blockade, and made a few prints, majestic and tragic in their simplicity and austerity.