Olga Belakovskaya (1963-Present)
"The aim of painting is not the portrayal of visual appearances, or real tangible qualities of the subject, but the portrayal of the joy, understanding, and living interest of the artist, who sincerely is concerned with the object at hand. Because of that often familiar things or places, which have surrounded the artist since childhood can be understood more deeply and give rise to more thoughtful works than simply exotic places and appearances which at best can surprise us with fleeting feelings."

Olga Belakovskaya was born in 1963 in Moscow, Russia. At the will of her parents she began her studies in a specialized school for mathematics, only studying art in the evenings. It was not long until she transferred to the specialized art school No.1. In 1976 she was invited to study at the Secondary Art School in Honor of Tomskoy, the preparatory school for the Surikov Institute. From 1982 to 1989 she studied at the Surikov Institute in the department of Theatrical Painting, the studio of Professor M. Kurilko-Rumin. Belakovskaya also studied with and greatly admired the famous artists Valeri Skuridin. In 1984 she married fellow artist Nikolai Dubavik. In 1989, she resumed studies at the Academy of Russia under M. Kurilko-Rumin. Belakovskaya has worked as an artist in various theatres throughout Moscow. She has been teaching at the Art College of 1905 since 1996

.Jacob Landau (1917-2001)

Jacob Landau, printmaker, painter, humanist and teacher was an artist whose works explored the basic themes of human existence and morality with an insight that was both passionate and indignant. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he began as an illustrator, he lived most of his adult life in Roosevelt, New Jersey, a town founded in the 1930s as an agro-industrial cooperative for, primarily, Jewish garment workers from New York City. 

Here Landau raised his family, began a distinguished career as Professor at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, and immersed himself in the town’s thriving artistic community, along with such noted artists as Ben Shahn. The art he created, including ten monumental stained glass windows for Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, PA, gained him an impressive reputation, with many of his works included in the permanent collections of the world’s finest museums, such as The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York, and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. In addition, Landau received numerous awards and grants, including the National Endowment for the Arts and Ford Foundation, as well as Tamarind and Guggenheim fellowships. His work has been exhibited extensively in Europe, Mexico, South America, and throughout the United States in over 30 one-man and 200 regional and national group shows.

Throughout his lifetime, Landau’s art increasingly addressed the self-inflicted human turmoil of the 20th Century. Growing up during the Great Depression and profoundly affected by the Holocaust, Landau grappled with humanity’s cruelty to each other. Provocative and disturbing, challenging and seductive, his works bear witness to these injustices and attempt to uphold our moral accountability for these actions.