[Люси]

Masha Schmidt - a rare visitor in our country. For 20 years she lived in France, and, indeed, unique among the project participants' big French tour "live there permanently (unlike other artists who regularly move" back and forth "). However, Masha, too, is not sitting still. As a theatrical and kinohudozhnika it runs between Paris and Geneva and in the same capacity falls sometimes in Moscow.

So it was in 2005 when at Mosfilm filmed episodes of the Russian-Swiss film "The Interpreter," starring Baluyev, Safonov and Garmash. Or in 2006 when the Moscow Theatre Olympics came to Geneva Theatre "Barack" with the play "The Girl and Death". But here as painting, only a few works by Masha appeared in last year's Art Arena, personal same exhibition in Moscow were, I can safely say, in the last century.

France - country painting. 20 years ago, Mary Schmidt came off the train at the Paris train station, and, as she herself writes, "... straight from the platform at me freewheeling, light, vibrant and penetrating into everything: people, houses, trees ..." This is the first impression and the idea that the Impressionists, it appears, did not invent, was the quintessence, the foundation of her creativity. Masha believes that she is incredibly lucky: the fate provided an opportunity to develop in different but interpenetrating cultures - Russian and French. "This dual experience certainly shaped my painting." Experience is really impressive. After graduating in Moscow Stroganov School, Mary continued her education in Paris - at the Art Academy, and Sorbonne University, Saint-Denis.

His painting the artist has positioned as "expressive abstraction." Create a global fabric of a beautiful world that surrounds you from all directions and constantly changing elements of nature or the sun - it would seem the dream of generations of artists. But Masha makes his endless webs of fragments of landscapes still is her peculiar techniques and skills. Her work is recognizable - that you can see for yourself.

Papers presented at the exhibition - it is Norman landscapes painted on paper is very broad oil pastels. And only on location - in the thick woods, among the fields and cliffs. Normandy - a fantastic country, the power and the expression of which is difficult to describe - the artist shared with us, and said that in this series, written just before the show, it set itself the task of Norman to experience nature and the most "honest" to translate the emotion of color and stain.

Only at first see only a colorful assembly of spirals, lines, lines .... especially if we consider now very close. Gradually moving away from her, begins to experience a state close to how induced binoculars at the object - the apparent chaos on the canvas will magically begin to focus together and deep image. And now there are green meadows with paved paths between them, and somewhere in the distance - the forest ... or suddenly "appears" the facade of a Gothic cathedral, brightly lit by sunlight, burst through the foliage ... and you even see how overflows it glow under a breeze!

Herself Masha Schmidt believes that the picture painted in Normandy were a qualitatively new stage: "Channel scenery for me - very important splash as my other works are much less specific, they are almost absent in the plot, perhaps, only elements of reality. And these - very "documentary" in my understanding of the word. You can not imagine how I was afraid to miss the light time of the day, and while drawing, I was literally tossed with shock - such a powerful wave rolls back from the cliffs, sea and land ...


Mary Hayes