Two distinctive artists are united by the ties of 40 year-long happy marriage and the original art technique based in handmade paper production and sculpting 3D cast paper images.

Moving the liquid paper mass along the canvas, they make the relief of the painting with bizarre layers, wrinkles, dents and tears and sometimes glossy canvas spots akin to thaw holes in a snow field. This almost alchemical craft allows exploring the material to the utmost. A variety of color nuances and canvas textures, interlacing of fibrous, rough and glossy surfaces turn each painting into a three-dimensional object, encouraging the viewer to “visual-tactile” perception.

The imaginary system of Nadezhda Nikolaeva’s works is organically linked with the original author’s technique — painting over handmade and texturized paper surface. Her works embody echoes of landscapes and still lives, evoke associations with industrial machines or antique ceramics, contain hints of urban chaos, flea markets and dumps and even disguise as ancient tablets and manuscripts. They are imbued with the spirit of corporeity and consistent with the surrounding visible objectivity, emitting material energy that requires no recognition or naming.

Latif Kazbekov’s work is based on the original technique of producing paper, mixing natural colourants and forming multilayer structures. His original handmade paper bursts out of traditional graphic art standards and his three-dimensional objects change their appearance depending on light and view angle. The effect of three-dimensionality is also inherent to Kazbekov’s large-format watercolors made on rough handmade paper sheets. However, this effect is achieved not so much by the textured relief but by the original method of multi-layer, dense and fine painting, more typical for oils than for watercolors.

The compositional structure of his paper objects and watercolor paintings is always very ordered and detailed and can be compared to well a rhymed poem. Kazbekov’s lyrical and philosophical thinking reflects in his symbolic and parabolic paintings, which are intended to mobilize the intellectual potential and sensual perception of the viewer.

His imagery system is built on the real-world’s fragments included into the phantasmagoric atmosphere of his creative imagination — the space of reality “shrinks” and gives place to the metaphysical. Using realistic means, the artist creates a fictional universe with such recognizable objects as wild shrubs, cobblestones, buffalos, horses, or nude virgins that look transfigured, symbolic and rather meaningful. One of his most favorite subjects is trees.

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Latif Kazbekov 

1975 — graduated from the Gogol Art College in Alma-Ata.

1981 — graduated from the I. Repin St. Petersburg State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, the studio of prof. G. Epifanov

The Honored Artist of Russia.

Member of the Russian Union of Artists.

Member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Contemporary Art.

Since 2008 — a lecturer at the animation studio of the Faculty of Arts in the St. Petersburg State University.

Author of 26 solo exhibitions and participant of more than 300 exhibitions in Russia and abroad: USA, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Germany, France, England, Spain, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Poland, Czech Republic, Greece, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Japan, South Korea, China, the Baltics and the CIS countries.

Illustrated over seventy books.

Winner of numerous fine arts competitions.

The artist’s works are presented in the collections of The State Russian Museum, The State Russian Museum, The Central Exhibition Hall “Manege”, The City Sculpture Museum (St. Petersburg), as well as in the museums of Astrakhan, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Bishkek, Almaty and other cities.

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Nadezhda Nikolaeva 

1975 — graduated from the V. Serov Art School.

1981 — graduated from the I. Repin St. Petersburg State Academy Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, the studio of prof. G. Epifanov.
Member of the Russian Union of Artists.

2005 — Awarded the title “Master” at the International Master Class Festival.

Specializes in easel graphic art. Illustrated over twenty books.

Participant of numerous exhibitions in Russia and abroad.

The artist’s works are presented in private collections in Russia, the CIS countries, the USA, Germany, Finland, India, France, Switzerland, Greece, and Israel, as well as in the collections of The Museum of Non-Conformist Art (St. Petersburg), The National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Astana), and The A. Kasteyev State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Alma-Ata).