Zhenya Gershman

Zhenya Gershman is a Russian-born U.S. painter and portraitist. She is known for her "dramatic monumental portraits of iconic public and private figures"[1][2] and interest in art history.[3]

Zhenya Gershman in her studio, 2014

Early life

Her grandfather Mikhail Matusovsky was an award-winning Russian poet and lyricist who authored the lyrics to the song "Moscow Nights". Gershman held her first solo painting exhibition at the age of 14 in Saint Petersburg.[4] She received her BFA from Otis Art Institute with honors and MFA from Art Center College of Design. Gershman's early mentor was Orest Vereisky[5] and she later studied under the guidance of Lita Albuquerque.

Artist
Lift, 2017, oil on canvas, 130 x 98 in.
Graven, 2017, oil on canvas, 84 x 30 in.

Gershman's portraits are featured in public and private collections including Douglas Simon, Richard Weisman (she is included in the book "Picasso to Pop: The Richard Weisman Collection"[6]) and the J. Paul Getty Research Institute. Gershman's portrait of Sting is part of the permanent collection of the Arte Al Limite Museum, due to open in 2017 in Santiago, Chile.[7] The GRAMMY MusiCares selected Gershman to create portraits of Bruce Springsteen[8] and Bob Dylan.[9] A documentary film, The Model's Artist, highlights Gershman's innovative approach to working with artists' models.[10][11] In 2000, Gershman was a recipient of ALEX Award in Visual Arts from The National Alliance for Excellence, Honored Scholars and Artists Program, presented by Peter Frank,[1] who is quoted as saying that[12]

Gershman’s effort evokes not only Whistler’s and Sargent’s, but that from which they took inspiration, Manet’s and Velazquez’s–masters of the figure who in their own ways avoided the banal literalities of their contemporaries for a rendition truer to the vagaries of vision, and (thereby) to the dynamics of human presence.

Other

In addition to her artistic career, Gershman is an independent scholar and a museum educator.[13] Gershman's identification of a figure in Rembrandt's painting Danaë as a possible self-portrait[14] was discussed in Le Monde.[3]

References
  1. Building Bridges Art Exchange: Zhenya Gershman “Larger Than Life”. Fabrik. Feb 9, 2015.
  2. Zhenya Gershman Larger Than Life, Jewish Journal, 2015
  3. Bellet H. "L'invisible Rembrandt". Le Monde. February 2, 2012
  4. Mutkin, Vitaly (3 July 2013). "Родившиеся в Москве приложения художника Жени Гершмана новая работа в Калифорнии". News2World. Retrieved 23 May 2015.
  5. Zhenya Gershman. The Art Career Project
  6. Picasso to Pop: The Richard Weisman Collection ISBN 9781883792602
  7. Colección AAL. Arte al Limite Limitada
  8. Zhenya Gershman to Reveal Springsteen Portrait at MusiCares 2013 - See more at: http://www.campuscircle.com/review.cfm?r=17001#sthash.fOquUiyc.dpuf. Campus Circle. Feb 1, 2013.
  9. Neale A. Bob Dylan Named 2015 MusiCares Person Of The Year. Monsters and Critics. 21st October 2014.
  10. The Model's Artist (2015). IMDb.com, Inc
  11. Miller CE, Miller TG. Zhenya Gershman: Unveling the Artist's Muse. World News. 27 April 2015.
  12. Zhenya Gershman: Larger Than Life. ArtweekLA
  13. Zhenya Gershman, education specialist at the J. Paul Getty Museum, discusses how Peter Paul Rubens used drapery. The Getty. 2010.
  14. Gershman Z. Rembrandt: The “I” Witness Arion, A Journal of Humanities and the Classics. Boston University.
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