Revealing a previously unseen world
The exhibition at the Goetheanum features 20 paintings by Margarita Voloshina (1882–1973). The works from the second half of her life come from the Goetheanum collection, the Rudolf Steiner Archives and two private collections. Works by her husband, Maximilian Voloshin, will also be exhibited.
The painter and writer Margarita Voloshina, born 1882 in Moscow, Russia, received public acclaim when she was young for the portraits she painted of prominent Russians. But she soon began to question the naturalist style of her teacher Ilya Repin, writing in her diary, “Does it make sense repeating what is there anyway? An entirely new art is needed that reveals a previously unseen world.”
Her questions and inner search led to a meeting with Rudolf Steiner and subse-quently to her repeatedly spending longer periods of time at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. There, she helped with the building of the First Goetheanum, both by carving capitals and painting the ceiling of the small cupola.
Her studies of anthroposophy also led Margarita Voloshina to explore the nature of colour. In her autobiography, ‘The Green Snake’, she described her perceptions: “Transforming the experience of feeling into colour, into the movement of colour that becomes rhythm and ultimately form.“ The idea, she wrote, always had to “be sensed as a being, as a whole,” adding that “the composition must not be firmly fixed, as with the old masters, but needs to emerge.”
On the basis of these explorations, Margarita Voloshina developed a new style of painting, mostly for spiritual-religious motifs. The Goetheanum Art Gallery will show twenty of her watercolours on the Life of Christ until 24 April 2022. The exhibition will be complemented by landscape moods painted by her husband Maximilian Voloshin.
Exhibition “ ... silently, morning enters“. Paintings by Margarita Voloshina, until 24 April 2022, Monday to Friday, 9 am to 6 pm, Saturday and Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm. Access in accordance with current conditions for admission at the Goetheanum Vernissage 19 November, 6 pm. With Peter Selg
English by Margot M. Saar
Web: Sektion für Bildende Künste
Image: ‘The Egyptian Initiate’: plant dye watercolour by Margarita Voloshina, ca. 1915 (Photo: Goetheanum Art Collection)