Exhibition of December 2019

Svetlana Luneva studied drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts, was engaged in painting under guidance of A. Kondratyev, collaborated with the group "Nomad". Thanks to V. P. Povarova and G. P. Chudnovskaya, she became acquainted with various areas of St. Petersburg analyticism. She studied at the faculty "Theory and Practice of Fine Arts" in the Sorbonne, which she successfully graduated with a diploma.

Since 1992, constantly exhibited in Russia, France, America, Indonesia.

The first exhibitions were held in Indonesia. This was followed by exhibitions at the consulate in the United States and France (90s - 2000s).

The author's works are in private collections in Russia and abroad.

     ... suddenly it turned out that my childhood friend, a classmate who spent all her life with pencil and paints, a teacher of French language and literature, who became the wife of a French engineer who, through his work, established systems in different countries, and therefore the whole family had to sway between countries and continents, in domestic disorder; the mother of three sons, who often had to be taught at home due to endless travel; so, suddenly it turned out that in her life there was one stability - Painting.

     This is an amazing story of an artist who paints only for herself. More truly, she cannot escape from painting. Svetlana does not belong to any group, does not look for the press, or galleries, or orders. This is the type of creator, together with the impressionists, “unrecognized” and other unsystematic, who lives by the need to capture the inner Divine world of Nature on canvas or fabric. Nature itself becomes a dream in her works. It is such dreams that we see in childhood, when we wake up in the morning, filled with the happiness of being that came from nowhere.

    Unobtrusive, Petersburg-based intelligent optimism pervades Svetlana’s painting, like the warm rays of the invisible sun, and penetrates the soul, fills it with calm confidence that the world is beautiful, and that there will still be. These pictures are not about spring, but about its expectation, because we all, born in Saint-Petersburg or adopted by this city, have been waiting for the sun, light and heat all our lives. Instead, fog, wind, and rain often occur. But, once we began to wait and hope, we go through life, filled with this invisible to others light, sun and warmth all our lives. In the paintings of Luneva-Simon, not so much flowers as their perception by us. In winter there are no flowers, but we continue to cherish in the memory the vague outlines of plants that pleased us in the short Petersburg summer, or seen somewhere on a trip to Italy. These flowers are in our memory, their obscure contours emitting a wonderful unearthly light become The guardian angels of flowers in our soul. They accompany us and protect us from the cold, evil and violence.

     Standing in front of a picture, one must first allow its light to penetrate the mind and soul, and only after that one can think about what flower is depicted by the author, from which garden. Sometimes it seems to me that when the light turns off late in the exhibition hall, the paintings by Svetlana Luneva-Simon continue to emit this unreal light, the colors of the rainbow, mixed in the dance. And this light is gradually turning into a pearly haze, which you want to breathe, like Saint-Petersburg air.

Olga Lavrova

     Historian, former employee of the State Hermitage Museum, Director of the Castle Museum of the Dukes of the Württemberg provinces of Le Du, organizer and commissioner of exhibitions. Currently, the organizer of the exhibition "Flowers and fruits - everything that you do not know about them. Botany, history, mythology, etymology, the history of discoveries and travels of garden plants, vegetables and fruits."