Painter and illustrator
Vera Ermolaeva
The avant-garde artist who ran the Vitebsk art school and made picture books sing.
On Picturepops™ cards · 1
The life
1893–1937Born Kliuchi, Saratov province, Russia
Vera Ermolaeva was lamed by a fall from a horse as a child and walked with crutches all her life. In 1919 she went to teach at the People’s Art School in Vitebsk, invited Kazimir Malevich to join her, and in 1921 became its director. From 1925 she illustrated children’s books in Leningrad, loose and bright and full of animals. She was arrested in 1934 and died in a labour camp in Kazakhstan in 1937. Our card, The Unlucky Coachman, comes from her picture book of that name, published in 1929.