The Russian painter Vera Vasilievna Donskaya-Khilko clearly has an affinity for the naked human body and what it can get up to, but the official, sanitised description of her work on her website describes it as ‘aiming to depict the historical truth of her country within the broader context of world events, reflecting historical epochs through symbolic and metaphorical imagery’. In good Soviet-era practice she tells us all about her family history (great-grandfather the opera singer Lavrenty Dmitrievich Donskoy, maternal grandmother Donskaya Maria Nikolaevna a teacher of Russian and literature, maternal grandfather Basnev Alexander Ivanovich a school director, mother the economist Lobashkova Inna Aleksandrovna, father Lobashkov Vasily Pavlovich a veteran of the Great Patriotic War and senior engineer at the Academy of Sciences who produced equipment for spaceships, husband Gennady Anatolyevich Khilko an architect specialising in bridge and tunnel construction, daughter Lyudmila also an artist and illustrator), before modestly returning to her own career.

Vera grew up in St Petersburg, graduating from comprehensive school and art school, specialising in fabric painting and weaving. In 1983 she graduated from the Industrial College of Building Materials and Techniques, specialising in architecture. From 1983 to 1989 she received art training from Yuri Ivanovich Skorikov, and from 1996  studied the hermeneutics of art with the artist Ivan Stepanovich Solovyov. She now works as an artist and art teacher.

Her first exhibition was at LenExpo in St Petersburg in 1991, and she has since exhibited regularly, mostly in her home city.

Vera Donskaya-Khilko’s website (in Russian) is here, and her Facebook page here (though she has not posted anything new since 2021).

We are very grateful to our Russian friend Yuri for suggesting the inclusion of this artist, and for supplying most of the images.