Below is Tatiana's biography, as she wrote it 3 years before she died (that is, in 2000).

Tatiana Kofyan (center) at her personal exhibition in Tel Aviv.

My name is Tatiana Kofyan. I have decided to start this site on a subject of great interest to me: the Russian Art in the first half of the 20-th century.

While I find the artists, their works, scan and process the pictures (yes, I have gone so far with the technology as to actually use complicated graphical computer programs), and write the basic texts, my daughter, Vera, has made this dream come true, putting together all the mystical computer side of the site, namely the design and structure, the navigation and all these other incomprehensible words. She also helps make the small biography texts readable in English, and helps translate other texts.

I have had the good fortune to come across the Russian Avant-Garde for the first time over 40 years ago, in 1959. A group of students of the Institute of Art, and I among them, was allowed into the storage cellars of the Russian museum in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Paintings by artists totally unfamiliar to us were hanging close together all over the stands - Chagall, Petrov-Vodkin, Filonov and many others. This collection was astonishing in its dissimilarity to everything in the upstairs exposition. Later I have met some of the old artists, who have been working in the far 20s and 30s, and even with some of Malevich's pupils, faithful to their grand instructor's teachings.

Tatiana Kofyan working at home on the "Guide to the Mammals in Israel" book.

I was born in 1941 in Leningrad, studied at the Institute of Art and later graduated from the Academy of Arts in 1969 in that same city. I work in the style of romantic realism, paint in oil and watercolor. I also use various graphic techniques such as etching, linocut and others, illustrate books for both children and adults, make precise drawings for archaeologists, zoologists and botanists. I also do various other things that most any artist is obliged to do these days - hand-drawn postcards, computer graphics and design.

My family and I immigrated to Israel in 1979, and we live in Kfar Sava with my husband Michael, and my son Jonathan. My eldest daughter Vera and her son Oded now live in a northern village close to the Lebanese border. We keep a white cat (though he is certain it's he who keeps us), who was unfortunately born deaf, so his name is immaterial.

I invite you to view some of my own work (and will add family pictures at a later time), to allow you to get to know me a little better.