This year October 20   GALLERY OF PUPPETS Varvara Skripkina   turned 18!

It's a special date - it's your 18th birthday :)!  In 2003 - the first and still permanent Gallery in the city !

Varvara Skripkina, owner of the first DOLL GALLERY in St. Petersburg. 

Always be nice to everyone! Suddenly it's an angel in disguise!

I understood the meaning of this phrase when in 2003 I opened the first and only art gallery of designer dolls in St. Petersburg. Yes, yes first! Although at the end of the 90s, a private Doll Museum has already opened in our city, thereby declaring that the author's doll exists!

But the puppeteers still remained somehow restless ... just like that, without some kind of general exhibition organized by the authors themselves, the galleries did not take dolls, considering it not art, but something frivolous ... So a doll jumped out of you (although I don't like this name, but already used to it) but there is nowhere to go with her ...

I am well aware of WHAT Gallery means for the city and people. Although I'm not really promoting it, the fact that it still exists speaks for itself.

It was in those years that I realized that it was mine!

Everything I love came together in this new art form.

Here I can do anything, about anything, I can express my fantasies with any material I can get my hands on. Sometimes even with sound. Kesha, who hangs in our Gallery under the ceiling with a sign that says, "Attention, I can yell!" Screaming!!!

After opening a museum and acquiring several of my works, my faith in myself grew stronger. Belief that dolls are needed not only "for me and my mother", but also for spectators, buyers, artists ...

There was nowhere else to go, so what could I do? And so, watching me struggling, my loving father offered to act as a patron of the arts (well, he's a creative man and has a healthy adventurous spirit). He suggested I look for a small room for such an exhibition platform - not a cellar - and not more than 50 metres. And in the end - 150 m, basement in the centre of St Petersburg, at kilometre zero! All in all, to tell you how I searched for two years for premises, artists, repairs... It's a long and separate story...

And now there is such a moment in time and space that I would like to designate this date, time, place ... No, not a "point"! And my favorite ellipsis ...

So the facts. HYear 2021:

-Varvara Skripkina (50) - mother, wife, three times grandmother, artist, puppeteer, hereditary patron of the arts, collector, gallery owner, well, and human traits in general...
-Golubev Leonid Leonidovich (80 years old) - a philanthropist who believed in the art of dolls, the father of Varvara Skripkina.

Varvara Skripkina, - mother, wife, three times grandmother, artist, puppeteer, hereditary patron of the arts, collector, gallery owner, with the human traits of a common character...

This year, on 20 October, the Puppet Gallery turned 18 years old - an Art Gallery of Excellence. It is now one to boast and be proud of. It is the First and Only, the largest, actually existing creative space.

And the last, for today, fact!

There is a place in St. Petersburg where you can come alive! With a doll! To the doll! For a doll! See, talk, listen, think, feel sad, love, LIVE! And then also leave with YOUR personal opinion about everything!

Old men)

Ever since I started meeting a lot of new people every day 18 years ago, the phrase: "Always be friendly to everyone! You never know who will come to you! It might be an angel in disguise!" - is not just a word to me, but an indisputable fact and a guide to action ...

                                                                                                                                                                                                    Varvara Skripkina.

Come to us! We are always waiting for you! We are always glad to see you!

GALLERY OF PUPPETS Varvara Skripkina & VAVA