Paraskeva Clark

Paraskeva Clark (October 28, 1898– August 10, 1986) was a Canadian painter born in St. Petersburg, Russia Her work is often political as she believed that “an artist must act as a witness to class struggle and other societal issues.” She has been a member of such groups as the Canadian Group of Painters, the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, Canadian Society of Graphic Art, the Ontario Society of Artists, and the Royal Canadian Academy. Much of her art now resides at the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

She was born Paraskeva Avdeyevna Plistik, the first daughter of Avdey Plistik and Olga Fedorevna. She was the eldest of the couple’s three children and was afforded four years more schooling than most girls of the time. Her extended education can be attributed to both her father who enjoyed the Russian classics and “instilled in his daughter a love of books and learning,” as well as her mother who would make artificial flowers to supplement the family’s income. After graduating school in 1914. Clark worked as a clerk in a shoe factory where her father had been previously employed before owning his own grocery store. Clark’s mother Olga Fedorevna died of pneumonia in when Clark was 17, a mere year after the younger had graduated.

Enjoying the theatre as a young woman, Clark was initially interested in acting but deterred by the financial expense of training. After encouragement from her coworker Elza Brahmin, Clark attended evening classes at the Petrograd Academy of Fine Arts from 1916 into 1918 when the school was closed for a “complete overhaul of the art-education system” after the October 1917 revolution, and was reopened as the Free Art Studios, at which point Clark was admitted to the school which no longer required tuition and afforded her a stipend. She left in 1921 and was recruited among other students to paint sets for theatres. It was in this work that she met Oreste Allegri Jr., an Italian scene painter whom she would marry in 1922. March of the following year they had a son, Benedict, and the new family made plans to emigrate to France. Unfortunately Oreste Jr. drowned in the summer of 1923 before their plans could be carried out, and Clark and Benedict left for Paris and the Allegri family home by themselves in the fall. Though the Allegri’s were well connected in the art world and Clark met many artists through them – including Pablo Picasso - now she had little opportunity for her own art, while caring for her son and doing domestic work for her in-laws. Despite this she created Memories of Leningrad in 1923: Mother and Child in 1924, and a self-portrait in 1925.

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