ELZA RADLOVA (1888-1924) Double-sided drawing: Nude. Crimea, 1919

signed ‘E Radlova’ (lower right) pencil on paper Elza Yakovlevna Radlova (née Zander) (1888–1924) was a Russian artist and actress born in St Petersburg. She studied at the Imperial Academy of Arts between 1908 and 1913 under Jan Ciągliński and continued her training at the Higher Art School of the Academy of Arts until 1914. She was part of St Petersburg’s literary and artistic circle (Akhmatova, Gumilev, Kuzmin, etc.). She began exhibiting from 1913 and participated in exhibitions including the Annual Exhibition of the Higher Art School at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1914), exhibitions of Mir Iskusstva in Petrograd (1922) and Leningrad (1924), and the Moscow society Zhar-Tsvet (1924–1925). She also exhibited with the New Society of Artists and took part in the exhibition Russian Landscape held at N. E. Dobychina’s Art Bureau in Petrograd in 1918–1919. Radlova worked as a theatrical decorator at the People’s House Theatre and lived and worked in St Petersburg/Petrograd.