Lora Malysheva

Born in Odessa in 1947, Lora Malysheva graduated from the Mitrofan Grekov Odessa Art College and continued her studies in Leningrad. Although Malysheva’s art found due appreciation in the St. Petersburg artistic community, it truly blossomed back in her home town of Odessa where the artist had to return due to family commitments. There, under the luminous southern sun, she began experimenting with vitreous enamel – an artistic medium requiring much patience and effort. The lyricism and intimacy of tone conveyed by enamel breathed a certain lightness of being into Lora Malysheva’s art.

Her main subjects are the nature and people of the Black Sea region. Unfolding before the viewer are visions of sun-drenched blooming gardens and natural bounty of the south. The principal characters here are ordinary women reaping the harvest, feeding livestock, preparing a meal or enjoying an afternoon rest. Typical southerners, they are languid and graceful in their movements. The artist added a profoundly philosophic dimension to their measured existence, turning some of her models into classical goddesses blending with their natural surroundings and others into pagan priestesses.

Lora Malysheva died in 2021.