Konovalova-Kovrigina Tatiana

1915 – 2008

Tatiana Vladimirovna Kovrigina was born in 1915 in Nerchinsk, Chitinskaya region. Her father was mining engineer and very talented man: wrote poems, made up home plays and enjoyed handcrafting. His children inherited its creative nature. Tatiana was into painting since childhood and dedicated all her spare time to it. She entered Irkutsk Lithographic and Artistic College and later moved to Moscow after graduation.

In 1932 – 1936 Tatiana Vladimirovna studied in VKHUTEMAS under the supervision of S. A. Matveev and E. N. Yakub. In 1936 she entered Moscow Institute of Fine Arts (Moscow State Institute named by V. I. Surikov), where her teachers were Petr Pokarzhevskiy and Grigory Shegal. Tatiana finished her study only after the World War II was over, in 1945. The chairman of the examination committee was P. P. Konchalovskiy and he called her final artwork – “Fascists came”– one of the best work in the group. In 1947 Tatiana Konovalova became the member of the USSR Union of Artists.

During the War Tatyana Konovalova was in evacuation in Perm, where she worked in “Agitokna” until 1943 which was curated by eminent Soviet masters Fedor Reshetnikov and Boris Ioganson, at the Perm Agitworkshop Union of Artists headed by M. M. Cheremnykh.

Tatiana Kovrigina travelled a lot around the country and worked in different genres: easel painting, caricature, graphics and even wooden sculpture. Once she was introduced to Rodchenko who said about her: “She is an artist from God”. In 1950s Tatiana with her husband Viktor Konovalov worked on the mural paintings at the Kievskaya metro station. When she got married she took the surname Konovalova-Kovrigina.

In 2002 Tatiana Konovalova-Kovrigina was awarded the title of the “Honored Artist of Russian Federation”.

Artworks by Tatiana Konovalova-Kovrigina are represented in the collections of the Tver Art Gallery, Tambov Regional Art Gallery, Rostov Regional Art Gallery and other Russian regional museums, and in private collections in Italy, France, Belgium, England and Russia.