https://www.galeriezlin.cz/en/programme/natalie-schmidtova-1895-1981-vzpominky-a-sny.html?period=current

Kurátor: Václav Mílek

Natalie Schmidtová (born in 1895 in the Tambov Governorate in the administrative unit of the Russian Empire, died in Rozsochy near Bystřice nad Pernštejnem) spent 23 years of her life in various cities in Russia, where he family moved for a better life. The profound experiences from her life in Siberia, the rituals of the domestic and agricultural work, hunting, harvesting and games later became the powerful and inspirational source of her work. The social conditions did not permit Natalie to attend school, and she never learned to read and write. She worked as a maid, nurse´s aide and as a child care nurse, spending the longest amount of time in the city of Novorossijsk near the Black Sea. In 1917, she met Hugo Schmidt, a Czech prisoner from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Two years later, they got married and moved to Czechoslovakia and settled in Moravia. She began painting in 1944 without any previous artistic education. About two years later, her work was on display in two important exhibitions – at the Umělecká beseda in Prague and at the Galerie Pierre in Paris where she entered the world history of “insitní painting” (creating art without any formal education) She recollects the happy moments of her youth in her work, yet she also dreams of the exotic countries that she wanted to visit. She kept her child-like spirit and naïve perception of the world, creating light and somewhat simplified images with extraordinarily emotional and expressive effects. She created more than 800 pieces of art over the course of her life.

Regional Gallery of Fine Arts Zlín