Nina Kogan Explained

Nina Kogan (c. 1887–1942) was a Russian painter known for her Suprematist works.

Life and career

Nina Osipovna (Iosifovna) Kogan was born in 1887 or 1889 in Vitebsk, Saint Petersburg,[1] or Moscow,[2] and studied at the St.Ekaterina School in St. Petersburg in 1911–1913.[1] In 1919 she helped to organize City Museum in Petrograd.[1] She went on to study at the People's Art School in Vitebsk, Belarus, and soon became a teacher there, together with Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, and Kazimir Malevich.[1]

Kogan became a member of Malevich's UNOVIS art collective.[1] While a member of the group, she created the work Suprematist Ballet in an attempt to animate Suprematist forms and ideas in dance.[3] [4] She also took part designing new version of futuristic opera Victory over the Sun.[1] Kogan participated in on several exhibitions of early 1920s, such as "Erste Russische Kunstausstellung" in Berlin, 1922; "Exhibition of Works by Women Artists" in Leningrad, 1936; the "Sixth Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists", Leningrad, 1940; and the "Seventh Exhibition of Works by Leningrad Artists", Leningrad, 1941.[1]

In 1922 Kogan married artist Anatoly Borisov. In 1922-23 she was a consultant in one of the Moscow's museums. Since 1928 she worked as children's books illustrator; she did not work in Suprematism after Vitebsk.[2]

Kogan died in 1942 in Leningrad, during the Siege of Leningrad.[5] [2]

Legacy

In the 1980s a large number of works attributed to her appeared on the European art market.[5] [6]

Her works are in collections of the Seattle Art Museum and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.[7]

Australian poet Clive James wrote a poem about Kogan, titled "Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven":[8] Two of her little pictures grace my walls:Suprematism in a special sense,With all the usual bits and pieces flyingThrough space, but carrying a pastel-tingedDelicacy to lighten the strict formsOf that hard school and blow them all sky-high,Splinters and stoppers from the bombing ofAn angel’s boudoir.

Further reading

Notes and References

  1. Misler . Nicoletta . Nina Kogan . Experiment . 1 January 1995 . 1 . 1 . 241–250 . 10.1163/2211730X-00101018 . 25 October 2022 . en . 1084-4945.
  2. Web site: Коган Нина Иосифовна. Галерея — реализация картин в Санкт-Петербурге. . oph-art.ru . 25 October 2022.
  3. Book: Across the Great Divide: Modernism's Intermedialities, from Futurism to Fluxus. 9781443870207. Townsend. Christopher. Trott. Alexandra. Davies. Rhys. 21 October 2014.
  4. Web site: New art for the new world – Celebrating the UNOVIS Collective at 100.
  5. Web site: The Faking of the Russian Avant-Garde. July 2009.
  6. Book: New Left Review. 2004. New Left Review Limited. en.
  7. Web site: Titel saknas . sis.modernamuseet.se. 25 October 2022.
  8. Web site: James . Clive . Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven . Clive james . 25 October 2022 . en.