Antonina Feodorevna Sofronova was born in Droskovo in 1892. In 1913, she began studying under Ilya Mashkov, where she remained until the Revolution. In 1914, the exhibition “ Knave of Diamonds “ included her works among those of French painters Georges Braque and André Derain, Russian painters Aristarkh Lentulov, Kazimir Malevich, Alexei Morgunov and Spanish painter Pablo Picasso.

Her paintings were also exhibited at the exhibition “ World of Art “ in 1917. During the 10s she concentrated on figurative paintings, but at the end of the decade, her style became more expressionist in natura, focusing on abstract and subjective graphic explorations in the areas of form and color. During the 1920s she taught at State Art Studios in Tver, her work included expressionist landscapes and cubist portraits. After a short period in Constructivism, she left it because it did not represent her philosophy of art.

In 1929, Russian artists, influenced by impressionist tendencies, joined to form “ Group 13 “ ( the number of artists in the first exhibition ). The group’s goal was to communicate the impressions of nature naturally and so they considered their sketches, study works and complete watercolors as works of art. Intrigued by their approach, Sofronova took part in the group’s exhibition in 1931, which would have been its last one due to the negative reviews generated by the changed attitude towards art under the communist system.

The Soviet government labeled as “ formalist “ any work that did not adopt a realistic approach or lacked of what he considered social or political value. Sofronova herself was criticized and rarely showed her work in public after a restrictive decree issued by the government abolished all official artistic groups in 1932. Two years later, socialist realism was declared the only appropriate avenue of expression for soviet artists. Antonina Sofronova continued to paint but at last retired in isolation, dying in 1966.

Since 1924, Antonina Sofronova was been making watercolors and ink drawings entitled “Moscow Street Types”. In this series she revisited the city with the homeless, the drunks, the beggars. The images are evocative of real life, life on the street, people hidden in bars or simply normal figures at work. Among the fundamental characteristic there was that of face without distinctive signs, such as eyes color, the mouth or nose, but only the outline and complexion, often with work hats or caps. The bodies sketched and often without a correct perspective, muscular arms typical of those who worked the land or did other however heavy works.

In her painting “ Figures - 1931 “ there are two figures, one male standing and one female sitting. The man has a hat on his head that recalls that of sailors, along with the blue and white striped tank top that he wears underneath the light blue monochromatic shirt with yellow buttons, over which he wears a black jacket with a red cuff; the trousers, tightened by a black belt, are divide into two elements, one completely brown and one checkered always in brown but in a different shade, even the shoes are brown. His posture is slightly curved towards the seated woman, on whose knee he rests his left hand.

Photo : Figures – Antonina Sofronova, 1932 – Mixed technique on paper.

She sits on a small multicolored stoll, she wears a hat that resembles a helmet, over brown shirt she wears a jacket with a red central part, the right sleeve white and the left blue, while the yellow pants fit into the red and white stockings, while the shoes are black. She is almost facing the man, her hands are on her abdomen, the left ober the right. The background is not prepared and shows the color of the paper on which the subject were drawn; Sofronova has inserted cubo – futurist elements, in a vertical sense, with a red and brown shaped shape, while in the lower part a white base is crossed by two red stripes, the same color is also the band passing a blue base.
Another feature of the Russian Futurists were the “zaum “, meaningless words, where vowels and consonants, capital and small letters, were arranged as desired by the artist, in this specific case the letters, in Cyrillic, P b I K O in the colors of black, white and red have been inserted. The idea of abstraction for this artist followed movements and experiments deriving from personal study, in some of her works she had also come to insert materials other than those normally used for a painting, using bronze and silver.
Her contribution to the movement she chose was important and intense, explaining her works with geometric and abstract elements; in this case all the compositional components unfold to use part of the available space. For the realization she used in an admirable way the mixed technique to exemplify the basic ideas of her work, with edges marked in black fade to become simple lines that blend with other colors. At the bottom right is the artist’s signature, found in the two capital letters, in Cyrillic ( A C ) dotted, used for the initial of the name ( Antonina ) and the initial of the surname ( Sofronova ).