Guseva Tamara

1918 — 2002

Tamara Guseva was born in 1918 in Petrograd. Her family soon moved to Nizhny Novgorod (further renamed into Gorky) where later she met her future husband, the famous artist and sculptor Evgeny Rastorguev. In 1940 she graduated from the Gorky Art College. In the war period she worked at the Gorky State Art Museum where she had to solve vital problems of saving the museum from ruin and keeping together its tiny but faithful female staff. In 1945 Tamara Guseva entered the art department of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography, where she studied under outstanding masters, such as Yuri Pimenov, Fedor Bogorodskiy, Gregory Schegal and many others. After graduating the institute she became a theater designer. Tamara Guseva designed several dozens of plays by Russian, Soviet and foreign playwrights in Moscow and in many other Russian cities.

In 1953 the young artist was made a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR and in 1983 she was awarded the title of the Honored Artist of the Russian Federation. All her further life was devoted to work in theaters, taking part in exhibitions, travelling to the White Sea, the Urals, Central Asia and later on, during the “thaw period", abroad. Tamara Guseva took part in numerous exhibitions and left quite a large and diversified legacy. The art critic M.Krasilin defines the style of her works as “impressionism in its broad, not solely French sense". She also painted an extensive series dedicated to Gorodets which took her several dozens of years to accomplish.

Artworks by Tamara Guseva are presented in the collections of the major museums of the country, including: the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, A. A. Bakhrushin State Central Museum, The Museum of Ceramics and the 18th Century Kuskovo Estate, the Art museums of Nizhniy Novgorod, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Bryansk, Cheboksary, Ferapontovo, the municipal museum and Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris; as well as in the private collections in Russia, Germany, Poland, France, Italy, USA, Czech Republic , Holland, Finland and others.