Famous Russian painter. She was a daughter of Yevgeny Alexandrovich Lanceray, a well-known sculptor; her mother was a sister to Alexandre Benois. Siblings include: Nikolay Yevgenyevich Lanceray (architect); Yevgeny Yevgenyevich Lanceray (monumental painter and graphic artist).
Zinaida Lanceray married Boris Serebriakov, her first cousin, who became a railroad engineer (d.1919). They were wed in 1905. They had four children: Alexandre, Catherine, Evgenyi, Tatiana.
She was educated in the art world. Her acute awareness of the beauty of the Russian land and its people was shown in her art. Her style became very popular in her homeland. In 1914–17, Zinaida Serebriakova was in her prime. She created a series themed on Russian rural life - peasants and the Russian countryside.
An important commission came to a fellow artist - the decoration of a large railway station. Several artists were invited to help with the work. Serebriakova took on the theme of the Orient: India, Japan, Turkey and Siam are represented allegorically in the form of beautiful women.
At the outbreak of the October Revolution in 1917, Serebriakova was at her family estate. Her husband died.
She was left without any income, responsible for her four children and her ill mother. She had to give up expensive oils and do her art with pencil and chalk. She did not want to switch to the futurist style popular in the art of the early Soviet period, nor paint portraits of commissars.
She moved to her grandfather's Petrograd apartment in 1920. Inhabitants of private apartments were forced to share their space with additional people, but Serebriakova was lucky - she was quartered with artists from the Moscow Art Theatre. Therefore, Serebriakova's work during this period, focuses on theatre life.
In the autumn of 1924, Serebriakova went to Paris, having received a commission for a large decorative mural. On finishing this work, she intended to return to the Soviet Union, where her mother and the four children remained. However, she was not able to return, and although she was
able to bring her younger children, Alexandre and Catherine, to Paris in 1926 and 1928 respectively, she could not do the same for her two older children, Evgenyi and Tatiana, and did not see them again for many years.
After this, Zinaida Serebriakova traveled a great deal. In 1928-30 she traveled to Africa, visiting Morocco. Her paintings from this period reflect her surroundings. Serebriakova became a French citizen in 1947. Finally, the Soviet Government allowed her to resume contact with her family in the Soviet Union. She died in Paris at the age of 82.
(bio by Audrey Burtrum-Stanley, Arkansas)