Icon-painting of Palekh

As in the old days, painters of Lopatin and Kuzmenko studio continue creating their masterpieces with gold paint and egg tempera. Furthermore, they have inherited the technique of putting primer, embossing and vermeiling with natural leaf-gold. The icon painters successfully combine experience and skills of their predecessors with new solid and durable materials. Any work is done fast without any concession to its quality and using modern materials, but closely following Palekh icon painting traditions. At the same time, the customer’s view is always taken into account.

Let us view the main types of artwork the studio performs. First of all, it is monumental painting of churches and creating various kinds of icons: cellular, lectern, family, signature, measured, travelling, temple and iconostasis. And what can be said about particular details of icon-making process? One of the strictest traditions of Palekh art starts with an important working stage when a wooden intermediate product is selected. It can be produced either of common or fine wood. All materials are utterly conditioned and then dried properly.

Vivid colors, charming expressions of figures, emotionality of their gestures, delicacy of floral ornaments and a bold and neat composition are those qualities which let Lopatin and Kuzmenko studio stand out among the icon-painting workshops. That is the way our old Palekh traditions regenerate themselves. Remarkable and well-recognized style of icon-painting, which has been kept and protected as valuable treasure of Old Russian art culture, is now coming back to life. Great achievements of famous painting schools such as Novgorod, Stroganov, Yaroslavl and Moscow schools, have found their second life within the painting traditions of Palekh. That is why archeologists, experts and amateurs have been so much appreciating old Palekh. And now the traditions of Palekh icon-painting school is carefully and honorably represented by Lopatin and Kuzmenko studio.