Evelina Schatz artist from Italy spent her childhood in Ufa

UFA, 14 February 2020. /Bashinform News Agency, Gulchachak Khannanova/ translated by Tatiana Aksyutina/.

Evelina Schatz - a famous poet, art historian, artist, publicist, publisher, culture expert, and theater figure - has been living between Milan and Moscow for more than 20 years. The most impressing events of her biography include working as an assistant director in the legendary La Scala theater at the productions of Russian performances by Yuri Lyubimov and Andrei Konchalovsky, unforgettable meetings with Joseph Brodsky, Lilya Brik, our fellow countryman Rudolf Nureyev and many other masters of world culture and art.

She came to Ufa in deep childhood in the most severe years of the war and evacuation. She was brought here by her grandparents from Odessa; later her parents miraculously arrived from the besieged Leningrad. Two years of life on the side of a mountain on the Belaya River bank left unforgettable memories so that in poetry collections of Evelina Schatz one can find poems with a recognizable image of Bashkiria. She even wrote a libretto with a Bashkir tale, which awaits an interested co-author for staging.

The little Evelina got her first experience of the future artist, helping her mother, Helen Mueller, who painted the faces of rag dolls, bringing joy to children and adults during the harsh war years.

Besides, it turned out that her father, Manuel Schatz, an artist whose paintings are now kept in museums in different countries, became deputy chairman of the Union of Artists of Bashkiria in Ufa and left the landscapes of old Ufa. One can see them and learn about the unusual twists of fate of Evelina Schatz in her interview in the “Countrymen” section.

Evelina Schatz took part in almost 150 exhibitions, including about 30 solo ones. Now, one of them is held at the Quintocortile Gallery of Modern Art in Milan. The author calls her personal style as re-melt. “I collect garbage, debris or fragments from the past. They call me that - “Madonna of Garbage”. I create - installations, sculptures, assemblies, collages from it. Isn’t it a reflection of our overstocked environment? ”she says.