Irena Aizen was born in Russia.
Grown up in a family of artists, she is the third generation of artists in her family.
In 1981, Irena graduated in arts from Yaroslavl Art college.
In Russia, she worked as an illustrator in a book publishing house.
Since 1990, she has lived in Israel.
Her artworks are exhibited in the Museum of Russian Art (Jersey City, USA),
the Naive Art Museum of Latvia (Riga),
the Tula State Museum of Fine Arts (Russia),
Galerie Natalie Boldyreff (Paris, France),
Danielle Peleg Gallery (USA)
——————————————————————–
Irena says:
“For me as an artist working in a realistic manner, the image of a person is connected with the specification of his sex, age, time and place of action. These conventionalities prevented my aspiration to the depiction of psychological states of a person with the help of symbolic signs and objects, working at a subconscious level.
The contradiction between the desire for realism – on the one hand, and the transmission of the generalized psychological traits that characterize a person throughout the history of his development – on the other hand, led me to a search for a character that allows me to bypass restrictions connected with realism. Ancient Egyptian images of a half-man, half-animal, prompted me to look for the image I needed among animals. In my search for animals in the world culture, I discovered that the hare is a character that appears in many fairy tales and myths of the peoples over the world, from America to the Far East and from Africa to Europe. Myths connect a hare with the moon, sky, and sun, its image can be found on antique ceramics, coins, hieroglyphs, as well as in national histories. Especially I was attracted by the fact that in these tales and myths the hare combines the masculine and feminine beginnings and reflects all the advantages and disadvantages of human nature.
I use images of animals to tell about people,
furthermore, certainly about relations between a man and a woman.
After all, we are all a bit animals…
Pyramids, that I create, have a philosophical and spiritual concept that reflects a balance of opposing forces in human life.
Each element of a pyramid is a symbol and has an implicit meaning.
For example:
– The bird symbolizes spirituality.
– The key is the answer to the questions.
The human desire for harmonious development is emphasized in the paintings. All elements of a pyramid are interconnected.
However, each viewer can find their own correlation of these elements.”
——————————————————————————————————————————
Articles:
Olga Morozova
PhD in art history
Senior assistant
A.S.Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow
The original article in Russian may be found in the site:
http://www.rusiskusstvo.ru/painter.html?id=192
Translated in English on the site:
http://www.artmajeur.com/en/artist/iraizen/artist/irena-aizen/126829/biography
Ilmars Zvirgzds
Magazine „Rigas Laiks”, June 2011
https://www.rigaslaiks.lv/zurnals/zakitis-visparakaja-pakape-1091
————————————————————————————————————————-