Polina was born in 1928. She was an ordinary rural woman who worked all her life in the field and at the collective farm. In the 1990s, she tragically lost her daughter and her husband died. Later on, she was often beaten by her alcoholic son. When the latter got into the prison colony, she was left all alone with her world of fantasies, fears and dreams. Raiko started painting when she was 70 and in a mere six years she managed to create her own world full of magical creatures, angels, birds and animals. She turned her own little house into a piece of art by decorating all walls with wonderful expressive images. By her late enthusiasm for art, Polina Raiko is similar to her American college – famous Grandma Moses. One may observe an original mix of Christian and Soviet symbolism in Polina Raiko’s works. The painter combines both of them into a powerful and self-sufficient mythological system where they organically coexist. But they seem to be only secondary elements of a more large-scale fairy and epic world that looks at us from the painter’s house walls.
The artist died in 2004.
The text is based on the materials of Rodovid Publishing House.
