Vera Ermolaeva
Her father, Mikahil Sergeevich Ermolaev (1847-1911), was a landowner and served as chairman of the zemstvo county government.
As a child, Ermolaeva fell from a horse, an accident which crippled her legs and left her unable to walk without the aid of crutches.
[1] In 1912, her older brother, who had become involved with the Mensheviks, was arrested by the Tsarist government and exiled to an area near Irkutsk.
[1] From 1911 to 1913, she studied in the studio of Mikhail D. Bernshtein and Leonid Shervud, where she became interested in Cubism and Futurism and became acquainted with many artists, including Vladimir Tatlin, K. Rozhdestvenskii, Mikhail Le-Dantyu (1891-1917), Nikolai Lapshin, Vladimir Lebedev, V. Kozlinskii, E. Turova, N. Liubovina, S. Lebedeva, Viktor Shklovskii, and Ilia Zdanevich.
In 1914, she traveled to Paris to study the painting of contemporary artists, but had to return to Russia due to the start of the First World War.
[1] In 1915–16, along with Nikolai Lapshin, who would later become one of the founders of the Russian school of book illustration, she became a member of the futurist circle, “Bloodless Murder” (Beskrovnoe ubiistvo).
She was interested in religious and folk art, including icons, lubki (plural of lubok), painted signs, etc.
Kovtun, Russian Painted Shop Signs and Avant-garde Artists (Leningrad, 1991), pp. 191–2.
After the revolution, Ermolaeva participated in competitions sponsored by the Visual Arts Department (IZO) of the People's Commissariat of Education (Narkompros) and experimented with working as an artist in the theater.
In 1920, she created set designs for the futurist opera “Victory over the Sun” (Pobeda nad solntsem) by Mikhail Matyushin and Aleksei Kruchenykh.
The studio published small runs of lubki (plural of lubok) and picture-books, created primarily by hand.
[4] Ermolaeva's illustrations for Segodnya publications include three works by Natan Vengrov (Myshata, Petukh, and Segodnia), all published in 1918.
[7] She illustrated such books as “Top-top-top” (1925) by Nikolai Aseev, “Mnogo zverei” and “Rybaki” by Alexander Vvedensky, "Poezd" by Evgeny Schwartz (1929), “10 fokusov Chudodeeva“ (1929) by M. Il’in, "Ivan Ivanych Samovar” by Daniil Kharms (1930)[8] and many others.
These include: “Vnizu po Nilu” and “Sobachki (Doggies).” With Iudin, she created a new type of picture book for children.
[10] Following her return to Petrograd, Ermolaeva led the “color laboratory” in the State Institute of Artistic Culture (GINKHUK), which existed from 1923 – 1926.
A. Leporskii, she became a member of a group dedicated to “painterly-sculptural realism.” In Ermolaeva's apartment, these artists held weekly gatherings, organized painting exhibitions, and hosted discussions.
Paintings in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg include: Three Figures (Golgotha) (1928) and Man with a Basket (1933).
[3] On December 25, 1934, Ermolaeva was arrested at the same time as several other artists, including L. Gal'perin, Vladimir Sterligov, M. Kazanskaia, and Nina Kogan.
