# Larisa Zhadova

Larisa Alekseevna Zhadova (born Zhidova; August 13, 1927 – December 9, 1981) was a Soviet art critic, art and design historian, specialized on Russian avant-garde. She is the author of the first monograph about Vladimir Tatlin. Daughter of the Soviet military leader Alexei Zhadov, she was the wife and widow of the poet Semyon Gudzenko as well as the fourth and last wife of the poet and writer Konstantin Simonov. Thanks in large part to Zhadova, who acted through her husband, the influential literary functionary Konstantin Simonov, the Russian avant-garde, while being subject of a general ban, in the 1970s was partially recovered for Soviet culture and scientific research.

## Biography

Larisa Zhidova was born on August 13, 1927, in Tver into the family of the later Soviet Red Army general Alexei Zhidov. In 1942, her father changed his family name from Zhidov, which indicated Jewish origin, to Zhadov.
From 1945 to 1950, Zhadova studied at the department of art history of the philological faculty of the Lomonosov State University of Moscow. In 1950, she started the postgraduate course of the department of the history of foreign art at the same institution. In 1954, she defended her PhD-thesis on the topic "Development of realism in Czech painting of the XIX century". While studying at Moscow State University, Zhadova met the poet Semyon Gudzenko, who studied there, and they soon married. Due to the Jewish origin of his son-in-law, Aleksey Zhadov completely refused his daughter financial support. After the birth of their daughter Katya in 1951, the family's situation became completely disastrous. Suffering from war wounds and barely earning money as journalist, Gudzenko died in 1953, of a brain tumor. After two brain surgeries, anticipating his imminent death, Gudzenko instructed his closest friend, journalist Arkady Galinsky, to take care of his widow after his death. Galinsky subsequently arranged the liaison of Zhadova with the editor-in-chief of Literaturnaya Gazeta, Konstantin Simonov, whom she married in 1955. Simonov adopted Zhadova's daughter Katya, giving her his patronymic and surname, and in 1957 a second daughter, Sasha, was born. Simonov, who had separated from Valentina Serova due to his liaison with Zhadova, brought their daughter Masha into his family.
Since 1954, Zhadova worked at Moscow State University, since 1958 at the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR. From 1960 she had a position at the Institute of Theory and History of Fine Arts (ITII) of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, from 1966 until the end of her life at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics (VNIITE), in the Central Educational and Experimental Studio of the Union of Artists of the USSR.
Zhadova died on December 9, 1981, in Moscow, at the age of fifty-four. Her ashes were scattered by her daughters in Buinichskoe Pole near Mogilev in Belarus.

## Research and publications

Zhadova's articles on Western designers like Mario Bellini, Ettore Sottsass and Tomás Maldonado greatly influenced the formation of a new generation of Soviet designers in the 1960s. Her book "Monumental Painting in Mexico" (Russian: "Монументальная живопись Мексики"), published in 1965, played a key role in mediating the expression means of Mexican Muralists to Sovjet decorative artists like Zurab Tsereteli. Since the late 1960s, Zhadova focused on the study of the Russian avant-garde. A breakthrough was her monograph "Search and Experiment. Russian and Soviet Art in the between 1910 and 1930" (German: "Suche und Experiment. Aus der Geschichte der russischen und sowjetischen Kunst zwischen 1910 und 1930"), published in 1978, in Dresden. In this book, Zhadova explored aspects of the work of Kasimir Malevitch, Boris Ender, Nikolai Suetin, Anna Leporskaya, Lyubov Popova, Mikhail Matyushin and other artists. Zhadova played a key role in the rediscovery of the work of Vladimir Tatlin, formerly banned, in the late 1970s, taking advantage of the influence of her husband who was chairman of the board of the USSR Writers' Union. In 1977, an exhibition of Tatlin's work, initiated by her and organized by the USSR Writers' Union, the USSR Artists Union and the Central State Archives of Literature and Art, was held in the A.A. Fadeev Central House of Writers. However, the monograph "Tatlin" prepared by Zhadova did not receive permission for publication in the USSR and was published after the author's death in 1983 in Hungarian by the Corvina publishing house in Budapest. In 1984, Zhadova's book about Tatlin was also published in German and English and finally, in 1990, in French.