Education
Masterkova studied under Mikhail Perutski at the Moscow Secondary School of Art (1943-1946), the Vasily Surikov School of Art (1946) and Moscow Regional School of Art (1947-1950).
Masterkova studied under Mikhail Perutski at the Moscow Secondary School of Art (1943-1946), the Vasily Surikov School of Art (1946) and Moscow Regional School of Art (1947-1950).
She was strongly influenced by Abstract Expressionism, which she was exposed to at the exhibition of foreign artists held during the World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow (1957). A dedicated abstractionist, Masterkova was associated with the Lianozovo Circle, a diverse group of artists and poets who fought steadfastly and uncompromisingly for creative freedom. One of the significant personalities in the Moscow art world of the 1960s, Masterkova’s work at the beginning of that decade included loosely painted watercolors in bright colors.
Soon after, she darkened her palette and in the mid 1960s, her work was characterized by abstract compositions created with a palette knife in which dark, craggy forms contrasted with a light background.
By the end of the decade, she began incorporating lace and brocade collected from abandoned churches into her compositions. In the early 1970s, these dark, brooding forms were still in evidence, but superimposed by collages of white circles bearing the numerals 0, 1, and 9.
She also created subtle, circular, black and white compositions by manipulating India ink or watercolor on wet paper, often affixing collage elements cut out of white paper. During this period, Masterkova contributed to apartment exhibitions in Russia, foreign exhibitions, and the first shows of nonconformist art, including the first autumnal review, "In the open air" ("Bulldozer Exhibition") in 1974 in Belyayevo.
Lydia Masterkova tended to work in cycles and series, the most famous of which is "Planets" (1976).
Her work resides in numerous museums and private collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Jersey, and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, which held a retrospective of her work in 2006. She died in 2008 at the age of 81 and was buried in Saint-Laurent-sur-Othain in Lorraine.