The Right to Create. The Fates of Women Artists of the Russian Empire

How many great Russian women artists do we really know? Sofia Sukhov-Kobylina, Elena Polenova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Bubnova, and many other talented women were in no way inferior to their contemporaries - Ilya Repin, Viktor Vasnetsov, Konstantin Korovin, Isaac Levitan. How did it happen that these outstanding female artists did not receive the fame they deserved? What was their path to great art, what inspired them, and what hindered their progress in creativity? How were their fates intertwined with a tumultuous era?

Nadezhda Dyomkina - a St. Petersburg artist and journalist, in love with her city and art in all its manifestations - wrote a book about this. Before you is a collection of biographical stories about seventeen heroines: they did everything so that today millions of other women, girls, and young ladies could engage in art.