Sarra Lebedeva

Sarra Dmitrievna Lebedeva (1892–1967) was an outstanding twentieth century artist and sculptor. Lebedeva’s works (along with the works of Vera Mukhina), conveyed to us the spirit of the times and entered the golden fund of the masterpieces of the twentieth century Russian art. It is to Sarah Lebedeva that we owe vivid portraits of people who made history, Valery Chkalov, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Vladimir Tatlin, Vera Mukhina, Solomon Mikhoels, heroes of labor and war. She was able to capture something more than the appearance of the people. Her images, especially the female ones, reflect the pressures of life, a sense of its transience, and, at the same time, reveal the profound properties of human nature.

Sarra Lebedeva participated in the sculptural design of large-scale and iconic ensembles of the 1930s, the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition, the Gorky Central Park of Culture and Rest; she worked on projects of monuments to A. S. Pushkin, A. P. Chekhov, and F. E. Dzerzhinsky. The tombstone on the grave of B. L. Pasternak was one of her last works. It is impossible to fully grasp the creative work of Sarra Lebedeva without her graphic heritage and sculptural sketches of nudity that demonstrate the subtlety and sophistication of her talent and are also presented in the collection of the Gallery.

A catalog of a unique collection of Sarra Lebedeva’s works in the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery will be released specially for this project