 Varvara Bubnova (1886-1983) was born and died in St. Petersburg. She came from a noble Russian family which was related to the famous poet Alexander Pushkin. In Bubnova’s old family estate, Bernovo, in the region of Tver there is now a Pushkin museum.
In 1903-1905 Bubnova studied in the studio of Art Promotion Sosiety the director of which was N. Rerikh the well known artist. From 1907 till 1914 she studied in the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Her schoolmates were Pavel Filonov, who later became a founder of the School of Analytical Art and Bubnova’s future husband V. Matvey (Markov), who was the first Russian researcher of art of black population of Africa.
In 1910 she became a member of the Youth Union and participated in some art exhibitions together with V. Mayakovsky, D. Berlyuk, M. Larionov, N. Goncharova and K. Malevitch.
From 1917 till 1922 Bubnova lived in Moscow and worked for the Institute of Artistic Culture with among others V. Kandinsky, R. Falk, L. Popova, V. Stepanova, A. Rodchenko. Then, in 1923, she moved to Japan where she lived till 1958. While living in Japan, Bubnova was mainly doing water-colours and lithographs. She had a great impact on Japanese fine arts and was awarded the Japanese Order of the Precious Crown by the Emperor.
In 1959 she moved back to the USSR and lived in Sukhumi, Abkhazia, till 1979.
Her paintings have been exhibited in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities of the USSR. Nevertheless, her best and most expressive works were not shown to the public, and they were criticized in the press. Attempts during Bubnova’s lifetime to publish an album on her works didn’t bring any result
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