By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted 5 October 2018)
Terms like
portraiture, expressionism, impressionism, abstract and landscape painting are words that the layman may be familiar with.
But tronie? Who’s ever heard of a ‘tronie’?
Well, just
ask Nadia Kisseleva what a tronie is and she could easily suggest you come see
her one woman exhibition at the Nairobi National Museum to find out what a
tronie is first-hand.
The
Russian-born artist who spent a big chunk of her life working and raising a son
right here in Nairobi (between 1980 and 1996) is back for the month-long duration
of her show which she entitled ‘The Other Kind of Beauty’. In the process, she
says she’s happy to share this old genre of painting which was popularized by
17th century Dutch painters like Vermeer, Rembrandt and Frans Hals.
Described as
‘defunct’ by some art scholars, meaning an art form or genre that’s disappeared
over the centuries, Nadia found herself painting a tronie after passing through
an emotional time in her life.
“I had been
travelling for a month, and hadn’t had a chance to paint. So when I finally
settled, I picked up a brush and painted the piece I now call ‘Red Dress,” she says.
She only realized after the work was done that it met the criteria of a tronie.
For one
thing, it wasn’t a portrait although it was a painting of a young woman. It was
a woman Nadia says expressed the feelings she had at the time of its creation. “Tronies
are studies of emotions. The girl in the ‘red dress’ could have been me since
she express more of my emotions than any specific person,” she adds.
A tronie
(meaning ‘face’ in Dutch) is said to normally represent a type of person who’s
of humble origins. And unlike the sort of portraits that were painted in
Vermeer’s day, they don’t represent a certain class or measure of wealth or
power.
Nadia, who
has formal training in fine art schools in the former Soviet Union as well as
in UK and Austria, says the tronie went into decline as the popularity of portrait
painting rose. Nonetheless, she loves the genre and more than half the works in
her show in the Museum are devoted to the tronie.
“I also
realized in painting the ‘red dress’ without even thinking about it, that I have
a deep affinity for women. That’s why I chose to devote this exhibition to ‘The
Other Kind of Beauty’. It refers to the inner beauty that I see in many women, especially
many African women.”
Yet her women
come in all different hues. Most are different shades of dark chocolate. But
Nadia has a marvelous way of blending colors so that her women’s faces
occasionally have more red or more white or even a touch of green.
“What I wanted
to convey was the quality of the relationships that many women have with other
women. They are supportive of one another, which is a trait I don’t always see
among women in other parts of the world,” she adds.
The main
reason Nadia says she likes the genre of the tronie is the freedom it can
unlock for the artist since one no longer needs to be confined to the realism
of a portrait. “I love the way tronies can reflect one’s feeling. They allow the
artist to be expressive of herself as well as to be brave and free.”
But she
admits, one thing led to another and she realized she could feel free about
painting her family. There are several works in the show that look autobiographical.
The main one is entitled ‘Family’ and the people in the piece are her Kenyan family
including her mother who had come that year to visit. The work is a cornerstone
of the show despite it not really being a tronie. Nor is the one featuring her
Kenyan spouse and their son. Nor is the image of five women lined up in a row
with the conspicuous white woman standing out as the ‘Visitor’.
During the
16 years that Nadia lived in Kenya, she not only taught art at Loreto Msongari
and the Nairobi School of Fine Art. She also had exhibitions at the now defunct
Gallery Watatu and RoMoMa as well as at One Off Gallery and the French, British
and German cultural centres. Then when she was back in Kenya last year, she
also exhibited twice at Circle Art Gallery.
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