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# Tradition is what lives today, what is not merely memory but constant movement forward
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/traditsiia-eto-to-chto-zhivet-i-segodnia-chto-ne-prosto-pamiat-a-postoiannoe-dvizhenie-vpered/
- Published: 2025-11-06T17:03:45.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:28:09.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Art, Moscow, Museums, People

> Tradition is what lives today, what is not merely memory but constant movement forward. For me, tradition and the avant-garde are not opposite poles but a dialogue in which I find my own point.

Irina Zatulovskaya, whose exhibition runs until 30 November at MMOMA on Gogolevsky Boulevard, speaks of the eternal temptation of civilisation and the importance of reflecting on tradition. You ought to know the name of Irina Zatulovskaya if only because she is one of the participants of the Venice Biennale. The artist, however, is notable for her modesty: she does not court shock, and in her natural spontaneity prefers deep reflection, bringing art closer to a quiet conversation, an unhurried chat.

Some call Zatulovskaya a master of the absurd, but she herself inclines to meditating on the strange objects of our everyday life from the painter's point of view, and says:

> For me, painting is not only work with paints; it is a way of making sense of the world around me, of bringing objects and space to life, of making visible what usually goes unnoticed.

And indeed, the artist mixes pastoral-spirited canvases and naive portraits with intricately dyed fabrics, battered sheet iron and fragments of antique furniture found in the street.

The retrospective of the pupil of Pavel Zakharov, Moisey Khazanov and Tatyana Selvinskaya, entitled “Life”, brings together works from different periods, including found and reworked materials: brushes wrapped in sackcloth turn up beside the shells of sea creatures, mirrors neighbour frescoes, ancient metal parts and archaeological potsherds. Zatulovskaya, after all, is known for her constant dialogue with the everyday and with history. The most valuable thing about retrospectives is the chance to see an oeuvre in development; here exactly 50 years have passed since the artist's first exhibition in 1975, truly a whole life. The curators are close friends of the artist, Kirill Ass and Nadezhda Korbut.

Today Irina Zatulovskaya teaches, paints church interiors, illustrates books and goes on creating large-format objects, increasingly seldom giving preference to the canvas.

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