Trudging around in the snow can be family fun if you’re living in Cambridge…. but during the Russian winter of 1941, the coldest on record in up until then in Leningrad, snow and ice was a backdrop to suffering beyond all imagining …. during a Nazi siege which lasted 872 days and was arguably the most violent in all history killing over a million people.
Its a tale which is being re-told through a powerful new exhibition of drawings and engravings opening at today Darwin College on the life and work of Russian artist Elena Marttilla entitled ‘Art and Endurance in the Siege of Leningrad’
She’s a woman who survived the siege against all odds and worked throughout documenting it under probably the most challenging and tragic circumstances ever faced by artists, poets and musicians.
