Tamara Wolfson paints very few still lives. Neither city nor countryside are static in her work. Movement is ever present.

The “Dancing Girl” takes one immediately back to the world of ballet. She has close relatives in Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, and she herself mastered the art of scenography while working in musical theater in Ukraine. Purposeful movement makes one think of Fauvism when seeing Tamara’s work, and of Gustave Moreau’s prediction when he told Matisse​​: "You will simplify painting".

Unlike a classical expressionist painter, however, Tamara simplifies the world of her paintings not to the “Scream” or the poster, but to the concrete feeling of a general historic style. Of course, she also paints portraits of specific people carrying their real names. In all her drawings and paintings, one can hear a melody - Ukraine is famous among the Slavic peoples for its melodiousness. Whatever she holds in her hand - be it a brush, a pen, or a pencil - she wields it with confidence.

Though melancholic, meditative notes peek through in some of her works, such as “Skyscraper with an Old Building”, there is no figurative nostalgia here. Instead, Tamara offers the viewer something she likes to call “figurative objectivity”: if she has drawn that way, that’s how it is!

If one were to try to define Tamara’s style, one would have to label it as figurative. But it her art is a figurative art all its own. Perhaps this is due to her love of unfinished works, of the non-finito… A Japanese courtesan of the Middle Ages, Sei Shonagun, wrote in her Pillow Book: “When the unfinished is left as is, one has the impression that life flows by calmly and peacefully”.

It is precisely this kind of non-finito that defines Tamara-the-artist, and sets her apart from two movements within the fine arts: Fauvism and Expressionism.

Dmitry Ukhov
Translation by Masha Shpolberg