Irina Baldina

Irina Mikhailovna Baldina (Russian: Ири́на Миха́йловна Ба́лдина; May 18, 1922, Moscow, Soviet Russia – January 15, 2009, Saint Petersburg, Russia) was a Soviet Russian painter who lived and worked in Leningrad, was a member of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists (before 1992 the Leningrad branch of Union of Artists of Russian Federation), and is regarded as a representative of the Leningrad school of painting.

Windy day. 1968

Irina Mikhailovna Baldina was born May 18, 1922 in Moscow. In 1940-1941 she studied at the Moscow Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. In 1945 after the Great Patriotic war Baldin was admitted on the Department of Painting of the Repin Institute of Arts in Leningrad, where she studied of Alexander Debler, Boris Fogel, Alexander Segal.

In 1947 she married to Alexei Eriomin (1919–1998), in the future well-known Russian painter, People's Artist of the Russian Federation. In 1948 she had a daughter, Natalia, who later also graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Leningrad and became a painter.

In 1952 Baldina graduated from Ilya Repin Institute in Mikhail Bobyshov workshop. Her graduation work was set and costume designs for the movie by Alexander Dovzhenko "Earth in Bloom".

Since 1951 Baldina was a permanent exhibitor of the Leningrad Art exhibitions, where she showed her work along with works by the leading masters of fine arts of Leningrad. She worked mostly as a painter in ganre of partrait, landscape, and still life. In 1957 she was admitted in the Leningrad Union of Soviet Artists.

In 1960-1980s the main theme of her work became nature and peoples of the Lake Onega region. She painted such paintings and sketches from the life as "The Road to Oyash", "Summer Cottages" (both 1954), "Young Rowan tree", "Evening" (both 1956), "Flowers bells", "A Lilac" (both 1957), "Natasha", "Girls on the rock" (both 1960), "Girls" (1961), "Uzbek woman", "Nurse" (both 1962)", "Morning", "Uzbek women" (both 1964), "A Postman Marya Petrovna Rodionova", "Portrait of Alexander Baldin" (both 1967), "A Portrait of Dmitry Shostakovich" (1971), "A Youth" (1975), "A Portrait of the Artist Alexei Eriomin" (1977), "A Portrait of Spirova - the mother of the heroine of Stalingrad Natasha Kochuevskoy" (1980), "Folk narrator from Karelia Irina Andreyevna Fedosov" (1990), and others.

Her style is distinguished by a broad painting, vigorous stroke, intensified over the years decorative effect. She skillfully used the techniques of plein air painting, subtly passed a variety of shades of mood and color relationships in the northern nature.

Irina Mikhailovna Baldina died on January 15, 2009 in Saint Petersburg at the eighty-seventh year of life. Paintings by Irina Baldina reside in Art museums and private collections in the Russia, France, Finland, USA, Japan, Germane, England, and other countries.