Lydia Masterkova

(1927, Moscow–2008, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, France)

Palace, 1968
Appliqué and oil on canvas, 110 х 98.5 cm
Mark Kurtser collection

As the art historian Viktor Tupitsyn observes, Lydia Masterkova’s use of lace from her grandmother’s trunk and brocade found in abandoned churches in her paintings from the late 1960s “set the artist apart in the patriarchal world of Moscow’s alternative art scene.” Appliqués made from old fabric do not simply rebel against the male world and the hero myth in underground art. They also appeal to pre-revolutionary textures as a (spiritual) medium. Palace appears semi-abstract: in one of the fabric fragments one can recognize a gable; the vertical strips of textile resemble columns. In these works, Masterkova, who is often called a “direct heir to the avant-garde,” accesses intimate, feminine spaces and religious rituals, spheres that were not valued by the revolutionary vanguard. These spheres are buried under many layers of modernization and the ruins of World War II. They can be only be uncovered through abstraction as a form of “spirit-seeing” or “spirit-seeking.” On the back of Palace Masterkova wrote a markedly symbolist poem addressed to a friend named Shadow, including a play on her family name (Masterkova sounds like “masteritsa,” the female form of “master,” as in “master of her craft”):

The skillful Mistress will
create a worthy Palace –
where our meetings still
live on, as shades or shallows.

The title is reminiscent of another artwork that addressed the sacred past via abstraction, passing the avant-garde and modernization by: Jackson Pollock’s Cathedral.