When The World was Black-and-White. (2003) Painting by Netta Yudkevich

Biography of an Artist.


In the year 2004 I was awarded Grand Gold medal of M.C.A. – international festival of visual art, held in Cannes, France. To me it means recognition of my creative efforts, and my search to preserve the achievements of the past with the innovation of the future in contemporary Art.

I was born in Russia and was brought up in a typical Russian way. This means that at the age of two a child should be able to recite a little poem by Pushkin, and at the age of 5 to play a piece from some Piano Sonata by Mozart. With little poems I had no problems, but, in the absence of any musical gift, matters with the Piano Sonata didn’t advanced behind the octave.


As a child I did not posses any special talents not to music, not to ballet, and not to the art of painting. In fact, the opposite was true. I did not paint any better then any other children, nor even did I like to paint. My aunt, who was a teacher of art and craft, used to teach us – all the cousins, to paint in watercolors. Till this day I remember the little bouquet of violets in a glass that she put in front of us; my frustration and envy. My cousins, which were older then me, were painting much better.

From an early age I recognized the flows in my drawings, and the difference between my scribbles and the paintings of the real artists. I refused to create something so inferior.

Perhaps, my gift of painting did show up in some strange ways. When my mother tried to teach me reading, she would show me a letter and than ask: “What letter is it”? I would answer – “yellow”, or “green”, or “blue”. “I”, for example, was turquoise. My mother thought that I was not very smart, and it never occurred to her that it’s the artist was speaking in me.


When I was seven years old, I used to tear of the pages from the Russian magazine “Ogoniek," in which reproductions of work by Leonardo de Vince, Titian, Michelangelo, and others from the Hermitage collection, were shown. I hid them under my pillow, and when no one was around, I would stare, fascinated, studying them for hours. Indeed, they were my childhood's secret treasure.

In those days in Russia, I knew nothing about religion. I was not familiar with any of the Bible stories. Maria Magdalene, Judith, Madonna meant nothing to me. Yet, somehow I recognized the "divinity" of the great art.

During my adolescent years I went to study art with a private teacher, because the neighbor’s girl, Irene, went. Irene wanted to be an artist. I desperately wanted to learn at list to draw anything, despite my lack of abilities. After a few lessons I realized that I have it… I knew how to look at an object, how to copy it’s shape, how to shade it from light to dark. I understood the main principles of painting, the rest was just practice and technical details. This knowledge was inside of me. The teacher just revoked it.

I read everything I could get about art and artists. When my peers asked for ...

• Nationality: ISRAEL
• Date of birth : 1952
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Israeli Artists