"Modern art today is engaged in providing shocks, and a twinge of excitement — and then in retreating from all that is eternally long-lasting and harmonious. An intense and intoxicating life experience is part and parcel of that art which is increasingly in the grip of commerce. Innovation and the latest fashion have taken the place of true style and traditional artistic training. My objective in my work is to chart a path, to raise simple forms to compel heights, to take the viewer to the summit to enable him to contemplate and sense the grandeur and sacramental mysteries of the spiritual world, to arouse faith in man. Words cannot express that which the eye can see. And hence: ever more freedom of expression, purity of line and striving towards the whole."
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Elizabeth Grachev
New York, 2005
ELIZABETH
GRACHEV
Biography
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Elizabeth Grachev was born on November 17, 1937 in Moscow, Russia.
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Moscow Textile Institute, Department of Applied Arts, M.A. 1957 – 1963.
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Theater designer of scenery and back drops.
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Designer of interiors for hotels and public buildings, Russia, 1967 - 1977.
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Elizabeth Grachev and her family (husband, Yuri Grachev, and daughter, Maria) left Russia in Aug. 1977, arrived to New York in April 1978.
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Elizabeth and Yuri, both artists, held a full-time job; Yuri was a scenic artist at the Metropolitan Opera House until he became sick, and Elizabeth worked as a programmer at Lehman College.
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In Dec. 2001, Elizabeth participated in “Abstraction in Russia” exhibition at The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Then together with the works of her late husband, Yuri Grachev, had personal exhibition at The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg (March – May 2005).
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Her works are in permanent collections of both museums mentioned above as well as those of Moscow's Museum of Modern Art and the Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts.