09.06.2015  First excursions to icon photo exhibition of Valentina Varlamova

At the end of last week, students of Mechanical Engineering Department of the NovSU Polytechnic School attended an icon photo exhibition of an architect, icon-painter and lecturer of Architectural Design Department Valentina Varlamova. The exhibition is dedicated to the seventieth victory anniversary in the World War II, as well to the author’s relatives memory who had been participating in the War.

There are photos of the author’s works, icons and portraits restorations and sketches of icons fragments at the exhibition. Their originals are in temples of  Novgorod and Saint-Petersburg dioceses, and in private collections. Two works were exposed at the 2^nd All-Russian Artistic Exhibition “Modern Temple Design” in 2006 in Yaroslavl.

The author of the exposition told the students about peculiarities of icon painting technique and the iconography of traditional Novgorod iconographic school. Additionally, she underlined that everything in any icon was symbolical: sketch lines, color matching etc. Everything was abode by strict rules based on the Holy Bible. 

All of the materials used in icon painting for two millenniums are natural. The oldest icon that is still in a good condition dates back to more than fifteen centuries ago. Besides, the author shared her reflections on the spiritual side of icon-painting and the challenges of spiritual insight creating any saint image. Valentina Varlamova responded to the art restoration questions. She also told what the first steps to start icon painting were and where one could learn about it in Veliky Novgorod. 

Here are the students’ viewpoints on the photo exhibition. Anastasia Sementsova: “I liked it very much. Surprisingly, people are making such beauty nowadays and it’s not far from us”. Ilona Smirnova: “I didn’t expect to see anything of the kind in Polytechnic School!”

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