Paintings by Elena Kalman: Catastrophe and What Survives

Recent works by Ukrainian-born artist Elena Kalman that reflect on moments of disruption and what endures beyond them.

Kalman’s paintings depict landscapes, roads, and imagined environments marked by instability, including falling trees, fractured structures, and distant explosions, alongside images of water, sky, and terrain that persist. Created in a time shaped by war and ongoing global uncertainty, these works place scenes of rupture in direct relation to the natural world.

The artist writes, “My work is shaped by the tension between catastrophe and continuity, between the moments when the world seems to fracture and the deeper forces that endure beyond every crisis.”

Kalman received her Master of Architecture degree from the Moscow Architecture Institute, the birthplace of Russian Constructivism, and her undergraduate degree in art from the Kyiv Art Institute. She immigrated to the United States in 1979 and founded the Stamford, Connecticut-based firm Elena Kalman Architects in 1988. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States. Ukraine Defiant: Paintings by Elena Kalman, a series sparked by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was presented at The Museum of Russian Art in 2023.