Tamara Yufa
KALEVALA of LOVE

Tamara Yufa's "Kalevala of Love"

The drawings of Tamara Yufa, the leading Karelian artist, devoted to Kalevala are the world of love and suffering. Dreams and tears of girls, mothers' daydreams, heroic deeds of youths...

The regular features, refined hands, graceful movements, everything is fabulously beautiful, and even the mother dazed with grief over her son's body is beautiful. The mosses and herbs weave the fascinating laces over the cold stones. The colors are restrained. The lines are laconic.

Many artists who illustrate "Kalevala", picture its heroes as the mighty half-gods. And while extolling these heroes get closer to the spectacular opening their great simple souls before him.

On the contrary, Tamara Yufa's heroes withdraw from the spectacular. Beneath all this beauty, and beneath all the decorative features of their behavior they seem to hide the sincere chaos of the real natural feelings.

And here appears the duality, the contrariness, which is so characteristic of the real art. The withdrawing beautiful images are vanishing into ashes and reveal the invisible eternal souls.

Lidia Yusupova