WINTER TALES ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER OREDEZH, 2000

Valery KATSUBA
with Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, Yury Vinogradov and Yevgeny Sorokin

The River Oredezh and its banks are places full of inspiration in the area around St. Petersburg. Alexander Pushkin’s mother and his nanny were born here. The estate where Vladimir Nabokov lived can still be seen on the river; when the writer was in the United States, his most cherished dream was to return one day to the banks of the Oredezh and see its picturesque landscapes once again. Ivan Shishkin painted his fabulous forests with bears here, and a little later the great Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, so the legend goes, painted his “Bathing of the Red Horse” on the Oredezh’s red banks, and Vladimir Nabokov was the prototype for the boy in the painting. To this day old locals tell the tale that pike are sometimes found in the wells by the river and can be pulled out with a bucket. On the banks of the Oredezh you realize that fairytales, being the fruit of imagination, seem somehow alive here. And that is why my friends and I turned into characters from fairytales in these very forests: one became Yemelya with the talking pike, another was Masha or Hansel or the Snow Queen. And, of course, we were all bears, echoing Ivan Shishkin’s painting “Morning in the Pine Forest”.

LIST of WORKS

1-1. At the Pike's Command
1-2. At the Pike's Command
2-1. Morning in the Pine Forest
2-2. Morning in the Pine Forest
2-3. Morning in the Pine Forest
3. Masha and the Bear
4.1 The Christmas Tree Story
4.2 The Christmas Tree Story
4.3 The Christmas Tree Story
5.1 Hansel and Gretel
5.2 Hansel and Gretel
5.3 Hansel and Gretel
5.4 Hansel and Gretel
5.5 Hansel and Gretel
5.6 Hansel and Gretel
6.1 The Snow Queen
6.2 The Snow Queen
6.3 The Snow Queen
6.4 The Snow Queen
6.5 The Snow Queen
6.6 The Snow Queen
6.7 The Snow Queen
6.8 The Snow Queen
6.9 The Snow Queen