Anna Aleksandrovna Kogan (1902–1974) was a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

artist. She was a

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

who worked in several media, including painting, textiles, ceramics, glass and sculpture.

Biography

Kogan was born in

Vitebsk Vitebsk or Vitsyebsk (, ; , ; ) is a city in northern Belarus. It serves as the administrative center of Vitebsk Region and Vitebsk District, though it is administratively separated from the district. As of 2025, it has 358,927 inhabitants, m ...

, Russian Empire in 1902. From 1919 to 1922 Kogan studied at the Higher Art School of Vitebsk under

Kazimir Malevich Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (

, where she was one of his favourite students. She was part of the group

UNOVIS UNOVIS (, also known as MOLPOSNOVIS and POSNOVIS) was a short-lived but influential group of artists, founded and led by Russian painter Kazimir Malevich at the Vitebsk Art School in 1919. Initially formed by students and known as MOLPOSNOVIS, ...

, which focused on suprematist art and produced projects and publications which influenced the avant-garde in Russia. In 1924 she joined the architectural deartment of the Institute of Artistic Culture,

Leningrad Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

. Kogan died in Leningrad in 1974. In 2009, ''Artnews'' reported that she was an "enigma to art historians", due to a lack of biographical history and the fact that none of her works appeared in Russian Art Museums. Her work is included in the collections of the

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), comprising the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public arts institution in the city of San Francisco. FAMSF's combined attendance was 1,1 ...

and the

Seattle Art Museum The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington, United States. The museum operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum in ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kogan, Anna 1902 births 1974 deaths Soviet artists