Lydia Schigimont was born in Moscow in the family of the famous painter Petr Schigimont. In her work join the influences of Russian traditional realistic school of painting, to that the father belonged, and the ornamental decorative direction, that she obtained through the study of design. Lydia Schigimont works with various technics: oil painting, aquarell, pastel and graphic. With these traditional tools creates she her landscapes, still lives and thematical pictures. Her range stretches from the figurative to the abstract painting, that she varies and interprets very free, both technical-handicraft and thematic-stylistic. With these tools she places poetry and sensitiveness in the surrounding world. Her work lies in the tradition of the high art, that goes from the frames of seeing reality and rises in the sphere of spirituals and heaven. The purpose of her art is to awake the aspiration for goodness and self-perfection in the people`minds.
In the landscapes series she shows a real nature and an illusionary nature. That develops on a real and exists in her imagination. Some motifs are real, but they are so reproduced that they grow imaginary substances, as if a nature would be given a new life. This new life must be more fading and momentary than a real life. The urban landscapes show not only concrete sights but also an atmosphere and a subjective perception of the painter, inspired by a city.
Many time Lydia Schigimont abandons herself to thematic pictures. That means here pictures that are connected with various plots, topics, images and fantasy. Under the pictures are the pictures especially important that have to do with belief and spirit. Lydia Schigimont wants not only to show the biblical content: the pictures of this series show human, decorative and fantastic ideas of spirit and paradise. Here she tries to connect organically together sensuality, beauty and spirit. Some works symbolize human dreams and poetical conceptions about spirit and beauty.
Characteristic are her still life’s in oil on canvas as well in aquarelle on paper. In this series of still life’s she develops the own style on the base of the Dutch school of still life. Some works in water colors she designates as a “Silent life” and she hopes that this row can lead us to the initial sense of the word “still life”. She is searching here for silence and beauty. All this works must attract and concentrate an attention of spectators on a definite combination of objects, that must initiate certain associations and feelings: freshness, love, solitude, mystery or melancholy.
“The search for a Divine in all the things is reflected in this quiet pictures. This is not such a haste of the search, but this is the question in the expectation of the answer, that Lydia Schigimont finds in many small things and in their concealed beauty. The pictures of Lydia Schigimont are fortunately no stimulant or spectacular works but the touching and hopefully moving sign about the location of a men between Heaven and Earth”Art critic Dr. Jörg-H. Baumgarten (Cologne)
“The art of Lydia Schigimont is completely in a tradition of a great art, the art, that transcends a reality and raises it to something higher, spiritual and heavenly. This art declares a presence of Divine in a reality and raises through that a reality over a daily life. This is a vision of a sunny day of sense and spirit, a vision of an eternity”Artist and art theorist Jürgen Kramer (Gelsenkirchen)