Varvara Bubnova

Who was Varvara Bubnova?

Varvara Bubnova was a Russian painter, graphic artist and pedagogue.

She was born in St. Petersburg in a family of Dmitry Kapitonovich Bubnov the bank clerk of lower rank.

Her mother Anna Nikolaevna descending from an old noble Russian family distantly related to Alexander Pushkin.

From 1903-1905, Bubnova studied in the studio of Art Promotion Sosiety. From 1907 until 1914 she studied in the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. She schoold with the soon-to-be famous Pavel Filonov her future husband V. Matvey, who was the first Russian researcher of African Art.

In 1910 she became a member of the Youth Union and participated in art exhibitions with Mayakovsky, Burlyuk, Larionov, Goncharova, and Malevich.

From 1917 until 1922. Bubnova lived in Moscow and worked for the Institute of Artistic Culture with among others Wassily Kandinsky, Robert Falk, Lyubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, Alexander Rodchenko. In 1923, she moved to Japan where she lived until 1958. During her time there, Bubnova was mainly painting water-colours and lithographs. She had a significantly large impact on Japanese Arts and was awarded the Japanese Order of the Precious Crown by the Japanese Emperor.