Vera Gutkina: A Universe of Her Own

Vera Gutkina (1953–2022) was a painter, writer, and poet. She immigrated to Israel from Moscow in 1982, settling in Jerusalem and becoming a central figure in the city’s community of artists from the Soviet Union. Her struggle with the cultural and linguistic gaps between there (Moscow) and here (Jerusalem) is also reflected in the transformation that unfolded in her painting. While her artistic formation, inspired by mentors such as Konstantin Korovin and Robert Falk, was rooted in Russian modernism and direct observation of nature, her painting in Israel was more inclined toward introspection and spiritual experience, prompting the development of a new painterly language. Gutkina’s human sensitivity and unwavering commitment to art find expression in this exhibition through three interwoven painting series at the heart of her oeuvre: Angels, Monks, and Birds. Together, they form a universe of her own—a visual response to the total artist she was, and to her place in the world.

The series Angels began to take shape during a residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris in the late 1980s, becoming a seminal body of work, remarkable in its scope: winged human portraits, their bodies solid and their gazes direct; some incorporate textiles and garments, infusing them with a personal dimension, while also evoking Christian iconography, Jewish manuscripts, and Egyptian mummies. Gutkina called them “my army of angels,” conveying the sense of protection they offered her. In their very humanity, however, these figures speak to her enduring faith in people, serving, to some extent, as stand-ins for family and community, as interlocutors with whom she could share reflections on belonging, justice, and morality.

About two decades later, the angels—as messengers of the divine on earth—were joined by monks, man’s emissaries before God, and birds, who were an inseparable part of her world. Gutkina taught them to speak, recited Russian poetry to them, and let them roam freely through the rooms of her home. Recurring in dozens of her paintings, often beside her own likeness, the birds enabled her to imagine a better world shaped by freedom, kinship, and beauty. In the final scene of the film Russian Face, also screened in the exhibition, Gutkina is seen teaching her daughter, Tamar, to sing to a bird: “Good night, my garden dear. / All the trees are sleeping here. / We’ll go to sleep before too long— / But first, let’s sing a little song.”

Yaniv Shapira

Events in the exhibition:

Tuesday 2.9.25 .25 at 4pm | Gallery Talk with Vera Gutkina’s daughter- Tamar Rachkovsky, the artist Olga Kundina and the curator Yaniv Shapira

Saturday 25.10.25 at 12pm | Gallery Talk with Vera Gutkina’s daughter- Tamar Rachkovsky and the curator Yaniv Shapira