Vera Gutkina (1953 – 2022) pushed the boundaries of color and convention to create her own distinct art form. Bold experimentation and an unrelenting drive to bring her artistic vision to life, were the signature of every work. Always evolving, Gutkina’s work explores beauty, spirit, and the depths of human experience. It moves from figurative to abstract, impression to expression, all on varied surfaces ranging from rough canvas to paper, loose fabric and discarded pieces of furniture. As an artist, she was fearless.

Gutkina worked with profound intensity, producing many series throughout her career, each defined by evolving techniques and recurring themes, always probing new emotional, spiritual, and aesthetic dimensions. However, her path to becoming an artist was initially far from obvious. 

Born in Moscow in 1953 to a family of scientists, Gutkina was drawn to poetry and painting from childhood. Though expected to pursue a career in science, she filled her notebooks with drawings. The challenges of life as an artist concerned her father who turned to the painter Vladimir Shtranikh — a student of the legendary Konstantin Korovin – to discourage her away from art as a career. Instead, recognizing her immense talent, Shtranikh invited her into his exclusive circle of students and encouraged her artistic pursuit. Still, in a show of respect for her father, Gutkina completed her master’s degree in optical engineering, a profession she would never practice.Yet, rather than rejecting science outright, she forged her own path as a different kind of scientist, one with a deep, technical understanding of color and its intersection with time and space. This formed the foundation of Gutkina’s distinct visual language. Color, she said, was her true “native language”. Despite — or perhaps because of — the Communist suppression of religion in the former Soviet Union, Gutkina became a spiritual seeker, drawn to the divine and the mystical.

Gutkina’s art is rich in subject and style. Capturing her daily life and surroundings, whether in Jerusalem, Venice or Paris where she lived and worked several times, was a consistent feature of Gutkina’s portfolio. The darker tones of her Soviet-era paintings gave way to a brighter palette under the more intense light of Jerusalem. Throughout her career she produced major series such as Women with Keys, Angels, Icons, Zen,Temples, and Birds & Humans. Her Angels are a defining body of work — powerful winged portraits that express both protection and her trust in humanity.

Gutkina was also highly principled and practical when necessary, and so she engaged in social activism. In 1994, she led a legal and public campaign to support the victims of a large-scale financial scam targeting Russian immigrants to Israel which had adversely affected her own mother. The head of the scheme was ultimately convicted and imprisoned. Victims were compensated. Gutkina memorialized the campaign in an experimental memoir and in a politically charged series of paintings she called “Meat Grinder”.

Even during the final months of her life, battling cancer, Gutkina continued to create with a kind of a raw and renewed vigor, painting and drawing from her hospice bed in Jerusalem. These final works, intensely emotional, even desperate, epitomize the unquenchable artistic pursuit which defined her life.

Vera Gutkina died in Jerusalem in 2022, at the age of 69. Her legacy endures in her paintings, writings, and in the lives of those she touched through her art.