Valeria Larina

1926 - 2008

"In 1946, Valeria Larina entered at the first course of the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after Ilya Repin. There she studied under Piotr Belousov, Ivan Stepashkin, Alexander Zaytsev.

In 1953, Valeria Larina graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture as artist of painting in Boris Ioganson workshop, together with Mark Klionsky, Leonid Kabachek, Izzat Klychev, Konstantin Molteninov, Vladimir Seleznev, Nikolai Galakhov, and other young artists. Her graduated work was genre painting named "Young Shipbuilders".[3]

Since 1953, Valeria Larina has participated in Art Exhibitions. She painted portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, still lifes, and sketches from the life. It became the leading genre portrait of a contemporary. In the 1950s she was most famous for her series of expressive portraits of steel-makers and workers from Kirov plant in Leningrad. Later she painted mainly portraits of females and etudes done from nature.