Evelina Brozgul

I was born in Sukhumi, Georgia, a small port town on the Black Sea, and I came to the US in 1978. My formal training in painting began in New York City when I was 11 years old with the Russian painter Vasily Sitnikov, who was part of the Unofficial Artists’ Movement in the USSR. Later, I trained under Mikhail Verbov, the last living apprentice of the famous Russian realist Ilya Repin. Since my early years, I have attended art schools in New York City.

In 1990, I graduated from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York. During the two years following my baccalaureate, I spent my post-college years at an Italian school for painting restoration (conservation), L’Istituto per l’Arte e il Restauro in Florence, Italy. There, I earned a degree in the restoration of paintings on canvas and wood, as well as fluency in Italian.

Upon my return to New York City, I began practicing restoration. I worked at the New York Academy of Design in the Conservation Laboratory and then began freelancing. John Singer Sargent, Luca Giordano, Palma Vecchio, Pierfrancesco Mola, Jose Ribera, and Francisco de Zurbaran were among some of the numerous old master paintings I have restored for private collections in my studio in Queens, NY. I worked intensely for seven years with art dealers and private collectors in New York City.

During my post-graduate period in New York, I continued to paint and teach painting and drawing privately. In 1997, I moved to Boston to begin my studies for a Master’s Degree in Painting. Three years later, in 2000, I received my Master of Fine Arts degree at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts in Boston. At the end of my last year of graduate school, I won a prestigious Joan Mitchell Grant of $10,000, awarded yearly to a select 10 art graduate students in the country. Since then, I have exhibited in NYC and throughout Massachusetts. My work has been shown locally in Boston’s South End, Marblehead, and Charlestown, as well as in Maine, Florida, and other areas of the US. I have exhibited with the Charlestown Artists Group for over 25 years and have been a part of the group from its early stages.

After completing my Master’s, I stayed in Boston and was invited to teach at the MFA, The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and Tufts University, as well as the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. During that time, I also taught at the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset, MA, and at the New Art Center in Newton. Presently, I own an art school, Evelina Brozgul Studio, in Sharon, MA, where I spend a large portion of my week teaching drawing and painting to all ages. I give private and semi-private lessons, as well as taking on commissions.