Filimonova Anna
Born in 1967 in St-Petersburg into a family of scientists, Anna graduated in arts in 1991 at the Academy of Fine Arts of the city, the renowned Repin Institute. In 1992, she moved to Paris, where she deepened her knowledge at the École du Louvre thanks to a French government scholarship, before going on to complete a Master’s in Philosophy of Arts at the Sorbonne University.
Since settling in Paris 1992, she has been a member of the MDA (Maison des Artistes, a French Artists professional association), the Taylor Foundation and the SNBA (Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts – National Fine Art Association), and is a sociétaire of the Salon d’Automne. Her works are held in several public collections, including the Musée Vaganova in Saint Petersburg and in the French cities of Sète, Gardanne and Pont-de-Claix. Besides painting, she organizes numerous international cultural events: art shows, fairs, concerts, trips and conferences and has built a reputation as a curator.
Her most renowned event is the International Festival of Large-Format Plein Air Painting, which she founded in Normandy in 2013 and has directed annually ever since. In its nomadic editions, the festival travels to new territories : most recently to L’Île-Saint-Denis, just outside Paris, for its 9th edition in June 2026.
Connecting two parallel but complementary careers, Anna Filimonova is a tireless and roaming artist. In her paintings, she seeks to capture not only the physical character of a location, but above all the atmosphere that drew her to it. This is why plein air painting feels like a pressing need to her: she needs to hear the surrounding sounds of passers-by and to feel the pulse of street life, even if she finishes her paintings later, in the quiet of her studio. She works in both oil and watercolor. Sometimes she paints portraits, but she also manages big canvases, such as Republic Gard on the Champs Elysées or Joutes de Sète and Orchestra in the Playel Room.
She has multiple predilection topics, but two have followed her throughout her life: gardens and landscapes, and music. Anna started her career with the portrait of Yuri Temirkanov, a renowned conductor. Anna often painted musicians during concerts and rehearsals, as well as singers such as Veronika Boulitcheva.
After dedicating numerous paintings to Paris, the city she fell in love with, she will paint a lot of others, that she discovered during her travels – New York, Tokyo, Fukuoka. One of her exhibition themes was Travel Notebooks.
In 2018, she made about 20 paintings including one portrait of Wan Ligen for the Museum of Shangini in Hubei, China.
Paris remains her home for most of the year, but in spring 2011, Anna Filimonova fell in love with a small village in Normandy — Fourges, near Giverny and Claude Monet’s gardens. She set up a second, complementary studio there, at 5 rue du Commerce (27 630 Fourges -Vexin-sur-Epte, Normandy France).
The landscapes of Fourges proved an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Working a lot in plein air, Anna felt the urge to share her passion very quickly.
After a few brief visits of russian artists and classes given to some kids during school holidays, 2012 marked the beginning of professional plein air workshops. Working together with the town hall and local companies, Anna creates a program combining painting sessions in plein air, including Giverny gardens, with the discovery of the region and its museums.
Since then, tens of artists from Russia, Europe and the United States, adults as well as students accompanied by their teachers, have come each year to follow in the footsteps of the Impressionists and benefit from Anna Filimonova’s guidance. In a few years, the workshops and art camps have moved beyond Normandy and the Seine Valley, extending to the Loire Valley and its castles.
To contact anna@filimonova.com
To learn more about Anna Filimonova’s workshop’s program
To visit her personnal web-site check http://www.filimonova.com/
