Maria Arendt, born in Moscow in 1968 to a family of artists and scientists and grew up in the Artists' Village on Maslovka Street, Moscow, where she absorbed a rich artistic milieu. Her initial mentor was her renowned sculptor grandmother, Ariadna Arendt.
In 1988, Maria graduated from the M.I. Kalinin Moscow College of Industrial and Applied Arts.
During the 1980s, she honed her skills in graphic art, collage, and iconography.
Since 1989, Maria has been a constant presence in art exhibitions. In 1997, she became a member of the Moscow Union of Artists, specializing in the monumental department.
Maria Arendt's artistic influence extends internationally as she divides her time between London, Israel, and Moscow. Beyond her art making, she dedicates her spare time to book illustration.
Maria Arendt's art can be found in esteemed museums such as the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, and the Schusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow. Additionally, her works are held in private collections in France and by notable collectors like Alberto Sandretti, Nicolas Iljine, and Brian Eno.
Arendt of the Jurassic Period
Mixed media on paper. 1974-2023
My parents were palaeontologists. Pale-ontology flowed in my veins. From a very young age, I was surrounded by strange artefacts that were ordinary objects for me. I was quite surprised that other children's homes didn't have collections of fossils, for example. In our house, there was a microscope and paleontological cabinets with numerous drawers containing solid chunks of rock that concealed various "treasures." These were the remains of ancient animals and plants preserved in stone through various processes or simply unique discoveries. Among them were sea lilies, brachiopods, ammonites, corals, belemnites, sea urchin spines, and other fossils.
When my father and I went to the mountains, he would always find a special piece of rock with fossils or concretions and bring something completely impractical for his garden back home. Some acquaintances even nicknamed him the "Arendt of the Jurassic Period" (they called him Yuri).
He even suggested that my sister and I draw on the reverse side of tables with dinosaur skulls. Recently, I was going through one of the cabinets with childhood drawings and found these tables. Of course, in my childhood, I was afraid of these skulls and tried to cover them up as quickly as possible. Some of them were doodled with princesses on the back, and some skulls had eyes, noses, eyelashes, and clothing drawn on them.
I decided to continue the series, and here's what I came up with.
Three Hands Sea Lilies
Embroidery on linen. Mixed media. Variable dimensions. 2014
A rich variety of Palaeozoic fossils can be found around the Ural mountains. Sediments of the ancient seabed upper layer often become exposed revealing deposits of the Late Carboniferous - Early Permian periods. This seabed is a part of the process of mountain formation. So, a deep-lying layer might become revealed showing a compellingly beautiful folded fabric of seabed encrusted with fossilized flora and fauna.
Recently, a previously unknown sea lily was found in the Lower Permian Urals, the Gipermorfokrinus Magnospinozus (the spikes of these sea lilies were mobile, possibly with muscles at their base for protection). Some other discovered fossils are not yet classified and still await their turn.
Often, the organisms of geological strata are arranged in specific geometric shapes – such as circles.**** These formations of unique beauty are reminiscent of a frozen dance, or the columns of ancient temples like Stone Henge, or Neolithic circles - designed to draw the human mind (or maybe not only human?) to connect the earthly and the divine, inspiring a feeling of mystic awe. The tendency of flora and fauna to form beautiful geometrically aligned compositions is so unusual, that not only scientists should be concerned, but perhaps it also needs the attention of philosophers, mystics and aestheticians. It reminds us once again to reflect on the possible existence of a higher intelligence, or maybe even higher wit.
