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# Natalia Turnova at the Multimedia Art Museum
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/nataliia-turnova-v-multimedia-art-muzee/
- Published: 2025-03-03T19:08:44.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:30:57.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: The East, Art, Moscow, Museums, Observations, People

Natalia Turnova at the Multimedia Art Museum. Let us begin by recalling the artist's biography, which I gleaned from some interview or other. A childhood in Kabul and in Myanmar. You see now where those bright, Eastern monochromes and colour combinations come from?

She traced her first artistic studies to Matisse. And there, of course, are the notes of Fauvism. The same source of inspiration as Tselkov's. Look, their portraits are even alike. Tselkov calls his own "mugs". Indeed, is this a portrait in the full sense? These portraits are almost depersonalised, schematic. Economy of colour goes hand in hand with economy of form. The artist offers no superfluous detail and conveys only what is essential.

Along with Fauvism, Natalia Turnova was impressed by German Expressionism. Perhaps the Blue Rider can be glimpsed somewhere too? There is a trace of the Jack of Diamonds men here as well. Yet to isolate the influence of any single movement in Turnova's works, so integral and so original, is difficult. For its time her style was undoubtedly a fresh reading of figurative art, and at just the moment when the world seemed a little weary of abstraction.

The paintings are indeed very large, hence the sense of monumentality. A photograph, alas, conveys neither the size of the canvases nor the impasto, but in person the works make a powerful effect. Another hallmark of Turnova is plasticity and sculptural quality, rare properties in this kind of art: her painting quite literally recalls sculpture.

Impressive. And despite the essentially heavy visages, decidedly joyless, and the strong, dominating colours, one leaves the exhibition "Unceremonial Portrait" in a light mood. The massive objects seem to empty the great white space of the main hall of the MAMM, calming with their weight everything that rattles around them. And you are left alone with them.

And if you step back and take in the whole hall, you understand how apt the arrangement of the display on different levels is. Handsome and forceful, the exhibition leaves the feeling of a pleasant acquaintance. To think that not so long ago Turnova's work was somewhere on the periphery, barely noticed by the wider public, and within a few short years such success.

Thanks and congratulations to the artist and the organisers.

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