(b Moscow, 1 Feb 1865; d Leningrad [now St Petersburg], July 1941). Russian printmaker, illustrator and teacher. She first studied painting at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1890–95), then settled in Paris (1895–1914), where she initially entered the Académie Vitty and began to be influenced by the Pont-Aven school (e.g. Breton Woman in Le Pouldu, 1897; St Petersburg, Soshal’skaya priv. col.). By 1902 Kruglikova had taken up etching under the guidance of Victor Roux-Champion (1871–1953). Experimenting in colour aquatints, she excelled in decorative landscape compositions. From 1906 she began to teach, at La Pallette and in her own studio on Rue Boissonade; her students included Maksimilian Voloshin, Veniamin Belkin (1884–1951), Ivan Yefimov (1878–1959) and Matvey Dobrov (1877–1958). In 1909 she turned to monotype as her foremost medium and in this attained her most expressive and original painterly effect (e.g. The Grand Fountains at Versailles and Tango at Luna-Park, both 1914; Moscow, Pushkin Mus. F.A.). Having frequently exhibited in Russia during her Paris years (with the World of Art, the Moscow Association of Artists and the Union of Russian Artists), Kruglikova returned permanently to St Petersburg in 1914. There she took up the silhouette, created from cut black paper, a genre she was to apply to portraits, poster designs, children’s books and illustrations in magazines (e.g. Printing an Etching: Self-portrait, 1915; Moscow, Tret’yakov Gal.). After the 1917 Revolution she was appointed to a series of professorships in graphic art in the leading Soviet art institutions, most notably the Petrograd (St Petersburg) Academy of Arts (1921–2), Vkhutein (1927–9) and the Higher Institute of Photography and Phototechnology (1930s). She continued to work in the full variety of fields of graphic art, although her subject-matter tended towards an increasing focus on the Leningrad landscape and on her artist acquaintances.

• Kruglikova, Yelizaveta (Sergeyevna)
  • Etching, soft-ground, §2: History