Irina Kazimirovna Kulakova (Novikova) was best known among arts professionals as a designer of fabrics and astonishing tapestries, however during all her lifetime she had nurtured a passion for watercolor, a media that she mastered perfectly.

Kulakova studied at the arts department of the Moscow Textile Institute from 1938 to 1943 and directly after graduating started working at the Krasnaya Rosa (Red Rose) factory that she left 17 years later, in 1960.

In 1951 Kulakova together with other young artists talked the painter Artur Fonvizin into giving them classes in the flat of Evguenia Rzheznikova (1896-1991) on Volkhonka street. The classes took place every Thursday and lasted 2,5 – 3 hours in which the students had to paint a still life composed by Fonvizin. The training went on for six years with short summer breaks and was an important milestone in Kulakova’s career.

Most of the works presented here were painted during Fonvizin’s lessons, although the dates might lead to confusion, which is due to the fact that the artist dated them a posteriori. Some of them were deliberately “rejuvenated” in the sixties or seventies in order to be included in various ongoing exhibitions, others were dated by Kulakova even later, in the 2000s when she was trying to recall when each of them was painted.