N.Smirnov
YEARS IN BOLIVIA
Smirnov's art appealed to Southern Americans in some particular way. Perhaps they admired his seafaring and nautical adventure pictures or his detailed style in a way correlated with local colonial culture both whimsical and exuberant.
E. Rudenko
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1992, March - a personal exhibition of Nikolai Smirnov works took place in the National Art Museum of Bolivia in La Paz. From July Nikolai began to work as an art design consultant at Papilero, the largest publishers in the country.
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1993 - A fruitful period in the artist's life began. He created a record number of works in this year - in total - seven. He painted a variant of "Silver Age" and "In 1812" using coloured pencils and tempera on cardboard as a new to him technique. For other four works inspired by Bolivian culture: "Crucifixion", "Christ of Potosi", "Bolivian Motifs", "Flowers of Bolivia" and "The Last Supper" for which he used his traditional media: gesso and casein -oil tempera on canvas, mounted on wooden board.
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1994, February - the second personal exhibition took place in Bolivian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Reception Hall in La Paz. Nikolai returned to the topic of Russian history in his "still-lifes". In this year he also painted the portrait of Katya. it is well-known that he made five commissioned portraits during his time in Bolivia but apparently he wasn't satisfied with them so he didn't include any of them into his exhibition album which he began to prepare for publication during life. The images of those portraits have not been preserved.
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1995 - Nikolai moved from La Paz to the city of Cochabamba to take part in decorating of Russian Chapel being built there. He painted icons of the Deisis order for the chapel.
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1996 - Nikolai and his wife Irina returned to Moscow.
