ART SPIEL

Natalia Zourabova: Nightlight at Kaliner Gallery

By: Noa Charuvi

June 25, 2025

I am meeting Natalia at Kaliner gallery on a steamy day in June. The artist, who arrived here for this milestone exhibition, her first solo in New York, is uncertain when and how she will be able to return home to Israel. The war in Iran was launched just a week after the opening. Stranded away from her family, she remains determined and optimistic. This toughness in the face of chaos is also evident in her artwork. The paintings in Nightlight are vibrant, large, and striking.

Branching out from her collective of four painters, New Barbizon, which had its New York debut at Kaliner Gallery a year ago, Zourabova presents an individual vision that is less concerned with plein air painting or realism. Like Matisse or Bonnard, she paints her living space and family members with a bold and intuitive palette. The act of painting offers a refuge from a devastating reality without compromising a clear vision of it. This group of paintings offers hope, suggesting that what truly matters is love and life: family, pets, fresh flowers, a simple meal, and a dip in the pool.

“I closed my studio door,” says Zourabova. “It used to only lock from the outside, so I would leave it open. After October 7th, it did not feel safe anymore, and I changed the lock so I could lock myself in.” This containment is clear throughout the exhibition. Zourabova’s world is “as narrow as an ant’s,” to quote one of the first female poets to write in Hebrew, Rachel Blubstein. Almost all the scenes take place in domestic interiors, or if outdoors, in a fenced, separated area. Zourabova, who has a background in theater, describes the paintings as a stage that becomes an alternative space and an outlet for processing the outside world. Any backdrop that has a hint of the outside: the street view out the windows or the sky, is behind a wall or a fence. Her characters are engaged in banal activities, such as sautéing a cutlet, reading a book, reclining, or working at a desk. The only figure looking straight towards the viewer is a self-portrait of the artist, which is hung here at the gallery window facing Allen Street.

As you enter the gallery, the first painting on the right is Red Room, showing a woman casually hanging clothes on a laundry line outside a balcony or window. Both the title and her green skin immediately echo Matisse, specifically his paintings Red Studio from 1911 and The Green Stripe from 1905. Zourabova’s inspiration evolved, much like the history of painting, shifting from the Barbizon school to one of its successors, Fauvism – moving away from painting outside and documenting nature, towards a liberated use of the formal elements of painting. The play of bright reds and yellows within repetitive geometric shapes is the essence of this painting.

Zourabova describes a dramatic evolution in her technique. There is an overall reduction: Of the narrative, of the palette, and of details. “I have no patience for details anymore. I am not worried about a correct illusion of space or being true to the colors I see,” she says. The gessoed canvas is peeking out in the background of several paintings, the artist not bothering to cover the entire surface. Using a palette knife, she scratches lines in On a Beach to disturb the flat surface of the ground. Bold teal contours and grass green skin appear in Balcony. While not “realistic”, the colors transmit the lighting and volume of the space in a manner that is so skilled and convincing that no articulation seems missing. The choice of almost preliminary colors, put side by side with their contrasting hues, creates a very loud palette. That Zourabova uses to avoid a too-comfortable scenery. Zourabova describes making the work with a new urgency, adopting aggressive gestures that are new to her painting practice.

In the painting Women, a group of women in bathing suits recline on a deck. The women are described with no features, their limbs defined with a thick blue line. Zourabova says that when she was painting this, she realized the detached limbs and beheaded bodies are referencing the October 7th massacre subconsciously.

Zourabova’s process for this body of work was working from small sketches she made at home and then taking them to the studio to create the large panels. Sketches from different periods were combined into one composition, and impressions she memorized were joined to define the color or change the composition. In a 2024 video on arttelling.co.il, she describes how painting her apartment and her neighborhood was a way for her to put down roots and make it a home after immigrating to Israel. Her home is the model, and its residents and furniture act as props, very much like the stage work she studied before becoming a painter.

In the largest painting in the exhibition, Nightlight, the yellow light from the sky outside contrasts with the deep blue of the window frames and the walls inside. Zourabova breaks down the space, placing the window wall sideways on the right-hand side of the three-panel painting as if the room were an unfolded box. The angle of the bed and its partial view place the viewer on top of the mattress, gazing out the windows. The girl at her desk turns her back on us, working. The room is so still and intimate that you almost don’t want to speak too loudly, not to interrupt the girl. The deep yellow walls and deep blue Oriental arches, made with thick paint, lend weight to the room and a sense of stability despite the breaking of perspective into three. It is this ambivalence that is present in every panel, making this work so unique, meaningful, and relatable. Zourabova invites you to sit on one of the mid-century chairs, enjoy a cup of tea, and chill. We must oblige.

All photos courtesy of the Kaliner Gallery.

Nightlight, at Kaliner Gallery, through July 19th, 2025
42 Allen Street, New York, NY.
The gallery is hosting a conversation between the artist and Hilit Zwick, Deputy Director for Engagement and Partnerships at the Jewish Museum, on Thursday, June 26th, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM.