Born in Norwich, England, Flora Yukhnovich did not have much exposure to fine art as a child. The 35-year-old artist tells Vogue, however, that she was “absolutely obsessed with making.”
“Every time I’ve connected with a new artist or the Old Masters, it’s really been from a painting perspective, because I’m trying to work something out or trying to see how someone else has done it,” says Yukhnovich, who honed her passion for French Rococo, Italian Baroque, and Abstract Expressionist art as an art student. “The material comes first for me.”
Material challenges are also what fuel Yukhnovich, whose studio has been based in Long Island City since August 2024, to push her œuvre to new heights: “It’s not interesting until it feels high-stakes, like it might not work out.” After her 2024 exhibition “Flora Yukhnovich and François Boucher: The Language of the Rococo” at the Wallace Collection in London, in which she responded to two pastoral scenes by the 18th-century painter, Yukhnovich conceived four breathtaking murals inspired by Boucher for New York’s Frick Collection. Not only is “Flora Yukhnovich’s Four Seasons,” which opened in September and remains on view until March, the artist’s first US solo project, but it also marks a technical breakthrough. For the first time, Yukhnovich made paintings on fabric that was applied directly to the wall, resulting in works that fully immerse viewers in her luminous, fantastical, jewel-toned flurries.
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