Volkova, Marina Isaevna

Marina Isaevna Volkova was a Soviet painter and graphic artist. From 1927 to 1931, she studied at the Kharkov Art Institute under Ivan V. Boichenko and Alexei A. Kokel. In 1932, Volkova moved to Moscow where she began her career in propaganda and mass art. Throughout the 1930s, she worked in the field of political posters as a designer for Iskusstvo (Art) Publishing House. Beginning in 1933, Volkova began exhibiting her work professionally. She was a featured artist in the exhibition-competition, Ten Years Without Lenin on the Leninist Path (1934, Leningrad) that was organized by Izogiz Publishing House on the tenth anniversary of the death of Vladimir Lenin. Marina Volkova also exhibited her work in several Moscow-based, All-Union exhibitions from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s. Some of her noted poster titles are: "Lenin's Course" (1932); "Let's Be Masters of Cultural Recreation" (1933); " Female proletarian to new victories! For technology, culture, for a new life (1933); "Leninist National Policy - Key to the Socialist Prosperity of the Backward Nationalities of the Soviet North" (1934); "Long Live the Equal Woman of the USSR!" (1937, co-designed with Natalia Bukharova-Pinus); "Long Live the Indestructible Moral and Political Unity of the Soviet People! December 24, 1939 - Election Day…" (1939; co-designed with Natalia Bukharova-Pinus and Vladimir I. Kostin).

Outside of her graphic design career, Marina Volkova was engaged in painting. Some of her noted works include, "For the People. Funeral of Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya" (1942); "M. I. Kalinin at the Crystal Factory" (1950); "In Peaceful Days" (1959), and "Tourists" (1962). She painted portraits of Honored Artists of the RSFSR such as the Soviet actors Anna A. Orochko (in 1933), Anatolii I. Goriunov (in 1945), and Natalia N. Belevtseva (in 1954). During the Second World War, Volkova worked in the editorial workshop of the Moscow-based TASS (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union) artist studio. She was a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR.