Head in the Clouds - 68cm

Larissa Smagarinsky

At fourteen, Larissa Smagarinsky enrolled at Dushanbe Art College to study painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, perspective and geometry. She went on to complete a Master's degree in architectural,
decorative and monumental sculpture in St Petersburg, a technical grounding that still shows in her bronze work.
Smagarinsky began her career in a Soviet sculptural landscape shaped by formalism and military commemoration. Where that landscape favoured hard lines and rigid, state-sanctioned subjects, her work
turned toward the human body, movement and connection, bringing a tenderness and grace that stood apart from the prevailing style. In 1982 she left for Australia, where she has worked for over four decades
and become one of the country's established sculptors.

Smagarinsky is one of few sculptors to have held two solo exhibitions at the Sydney Opera House: the first for the Bicentennial in 1988, the second marking the building's twentieth anniversary in 1993. She is among
the artists profiled in Slow Burn: A Century of Australian Women Artists (2010), published to accompany an exhibition honouring Eva Breuer at the National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery.

Themes and homage works
Smagarinsky draws on ancient history, contemporary events and human emotion for her subject matter, moving across a wide range of themes rather than settling on one. Movement runs through her sculpture like
a current. She returns again and again to dance, drawn to the instant a body holds motion inside stillness: a limb caught mid-gesture, a foot not yet touching the ground. Even her most reposeful figures seem to carry
that charge, as though the bronze itself were about to breathe. Love appears in many forms, from the frankly sensual, as in Lover's Ecstasy (1990), to the bonds between mother and child in Madonna (1992) and other
pieces exploring family ties. She has also drawn on love stories from mythology, setting them alongside more contemporary scenes of intimacy.

Public commissions and collections
Over her career, Smagarinsky has completed fifteen public commissions in Australia and eight overseas, and her work is held in the State Russian Museum Reserve Collection (Moscow), Art Museum ICM (Geneva),
the Coca-Cola Art Collection (USA), and the Alexandria Library (Egypt).

Selected public commissions:
 Dance of Love, Darling Harbour Exhibition Centre, Sydney (1988)
 Together Through Time, Macquarie University Sculpture Garden, NSW (1992)
 The Last Farewell, Memorial to the Light Horse Regiment, Holsworthy NSW (1995)
 Supporting Hands, memorial to volunteers, Paul Keating Park, Bankstown (2001)
 Olympic Spirit, bronze series, Hotel QuayWest, Melbourne (2000)
 Harmony and Diver, Darling Park Tower 3, Sussex Street, Sydney (2002)
 Modern Ballet, 4.5-metre bronze, Chung-Chun Sculpture Park, China (2009)
Her portrait commissions include former NSW Premier Neville Wran (Parliament House, Sydney), CSIRO
Canberra, John Saunders for Westfield Corporation, and broadcaster Nicolas Shehadie for SBS Television.

Awards and critical reception
Awards include Best Sculpture at the Gosford Regional Art Gallery Art Prize (2003, 2008) and First Prize for Ceramics at the same gallery (2017); prizes from the Sydney Sculptors Society (2004, 2008, 2009, 2012,
2016); and the People's Choice Prize at the Brighton Jetty Classic Sculpture Exhibition (2010, 2011). Smagarinsky has been a finalist in the Blake Prize for Religious Art, the Newcastle Sculpture Competition,
the Adelaide Classic Sculpture Prize, and the Mistletoe Sculpture Prize. Larissa’s work has been written about in The Australian (Elwyn Lynn, 1993), Craft Arts International (1994),
Architectural Review (1995), Art Collector (1998, 2009), Art and Australia (2002), and Kultural Art Magazine (2002). In Australian Art Collector, Anne Sarzin wrote that she “has forged a career out of marble and bronze
to become recognized as one of Australia’s leading sculptors,” and that her work is “consistently intent on capturing moments, spirits and essences.” Jonathan Bowden, in Craft Arts International, described her
practice as “optimistic courageous work, often sensuous witty and costly in its execution,” calling bronze casting itself “a major act of faith.”

Exhibitions and legacy
Larissa Smagarinsky has held sixteen solo exhibitions over 36 years, including two at the Sydney Opera House Exhibition Hall, Holdsworth Galleries, Soho Art Gallery, and Regional Art Gallery Gosford. Her 3-
metre rotating pyramid Faces of Australia, comprising 50 portrait busts of Australians, stands in Smagarinsky's sculpture garden in Wyoming, NSW.

"To me it is very important to leave something worthy behind," she has said. "A mark in the world. We are living ideas, thoughts and creations, where you are at your best."
Larissa has retired from sculpting - While editions from her existing body of work, remain available, her son,sculptor and foundryman Michael Vaynman, a respected artist in his own right, will produce these final
editions himself, so her hand still reaches the bronze.