In 1907 Sonia eloped with the young writer Alexei Nicolaevich Tolstoy and was disowned by her Jewish family. Together, she and Tolstoy began a Bohemian, artistically adventurous life among what later became known as the Russian Avant-Garde. In 1917, working closely with the artist Vladimir Tatlin, she was among the first of that group to embrace wholeheartedly the Revolution and its utopian promise. However, unlike a number of Russian painters of that time such as Goncharova, Larionov, Bakst and Chagall, by 1917 she never left the Soviet Union.

The remainder of her life was spent in Leningrad where she endured the brutal Purges of the thirties, the Siege in which she was evacuated in February 1942, and finally after Stalin’s death in 1953, some relaxation of the overriding atmosphere of fear and repression.

But, this was not the life and society she had sacrificed everything to create. How did she survive, not only materially but also spiritually? What was she able as an artist and as a person to bring to her circumstances to retain her own humanity and soul?

GENRE
EDUCATIONAL/GENERAL INTEREST
20TH CENTURY RUSSIAN ART HISTORY
WOMAN’S STUDIES
JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY


Photo: Sonia with her sisters, second from the right.


CONTACT:
LUCY KOSTELANETZ
contact@soniathemovie.com







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