Yermolayeva Vera
(1893-1938)

Art education VM Yermolayeva received by practicing in a private school-master M. Bernstein in St. Petersburg (the beginning of the 1910s.). Having become acquainted with the artists, innovators, united in the "Union of Youth", especially K. Malevich , who had a profound effect on her, she became one of the active members of the Russian avant-garde.

In 1919 Yermolayeva moved to Vitebsk, where he headed the People's Art School, soon transformed into Practical Art Institute. Along with Malevich and his students also found themselves in Vitebsk, she participated in the organization UNOVIS ("affirmative new art"), aims to develop and promote the principles of Suprematism.

In 1922 returned to Petrograd, and continued the research started UNOVIS in Ginhuke, where he led the lab colors (1924-26).

Picturesque creativity Ermolayeva still almost unknown. She started out as a faithful follower of Malevich, but in the second half of 1920. began to develop a method of transmitting objective form. A significant role was played by a trip in the summer of 1928 on the White Sea coast, from where she had brought a series of landscapes, characterized by picturesque expression and increased the power of color.

In the early 1930's. Yermolayeva worked on the series "The Village", achieving in her monumental enlargement portrayed, and in 1934 he wrote a series of still lifes polueksperimentalnyh in which, refusing colors, successfully operated pictorial interpretation of plastic items.

It is much better known for the activities Ermolayeva as children's book illustrator. Back in 1918 she, along with a group of artists organized in Petrograd book publishing gang "Today," which produced a tiny circulations children's books, decorated with engravings on the linoleum, and she sang the illustrations for the three of them, "mice" and "Rooster" N. Vengrova "Pioneers" Whitman.

After returning to Petrograd Yermolayeva collaborated with the magazine "New Robinson" and "Sparrow", and then with the Department of Children and Young People's Literature Publishing House of the State and quickly became one of the leading artists of children's books. Given its scenic experience, she has created a personal style in which the important role played by strong color and sharp, sometimes grotesque plastic. It is one of the first illustrated the works of James I. Harms ("Ivan Ivanovich Samovar", 1929-30), NA Z ("Nice boots," 1928), AI Vvedenskogo ("Fishermen", 1929-30 , "Exploit pioneer Mochina", 1931) and she was the author of witty picture books - "Woe-driver" (1928), "Dogs" (1929), "The Masks of animals" (1930).

At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. published a small series of books by Ivan Krylov's fables, accompanied by its expressive black-and-white drawings. In 1933-34. Yermolayeva on their own initiative illustrated the classic works of world literature - "Reynard the Fox" JW Goethe (color lithograph), "Don Quixote" of Cervantes and "On the Nature of Things," Lucretius (gouache).

This work was left unfinished. In late 1934, during the campaign of terror, murder unfolded in connection Kirov, Yermolayeva (after a serious illness walk only with crutches), was arrested and exiled to Kazakhstan. Neither the exact date of her death, no place of burial is not known.