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The following article originally appeared in THE DENVER POST on May 17, 1976. It was written by Barbara H. Ryan. It is printed with permission. All Saints' Icons Completed Lev Lominago might have had an easier life if he had been born in the 15th century. It was then that Russian icons reached the height of their development. Lominago, 32, a native of Leningrad, is an iconographer -- a painter specializing in the highly disciplined art of Eastern Orthodox icons. He has just completed a project for All Saints Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, 3274 E. Iliff Ave. Click here to see image. Ancient Russian masterpieces were neglected until the late 19th century, he explained, because their brilliant colors were obscured under layers of retouching and preservatives. The first Russian exhibit of medieval icons wasn't until 1913 in Moscow. And the militant atheism of the 1917 Revolution, Lominago said, soon inhibited public interest in them, even from a purely esthetic viewpoint. THE CULTURAL "THAW" of the late 1950's brought some changes. Antique icons became the subject of large exhibits, illustrated books and even an entire museum near Moscow. This recognition was fine for the paintings themselves, but the Soviet climate remained inhospitable for living iconographers like Lominago. So in 1973, the International Rescue Committee assisted in his emigration, along with his wife and assistant, Natalia, and daughter, Alina, now 8. When they arrived in New York, they were contacted by the Rev. Peter Burlakov of All Saints Church. He invited them to come to Denver and replace the small church's color lithographs with genuine Russian icons. They agreed, and spent more than two years on the project. Click here to see the artist standing proudly before the icons. ALL 36 ICONS are finished, and most have been installed in the church's iconostasis -- the partition that separates the nave and altar in Orthodox sanctuaries. Among the icons is one portraying more than 200 saints. It is traditional to include an icon of a church's patron saint. Lominago explained, so this one depicts "all saints whose lives shone in Russia." KRMA-TV (Channel 6) will feature the iconographer and his work June 15 on Colorado Weekly. The formal consecration of the icons is scheduled for late June. Lominago's plans for the future are uncertain, but already he has two more orders for icons. One is from a Russian museum-in-exile near Paris. The other is from cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who visited the Lominago's and toured the church in March when he came to Denver for a Denver Symphony Orchestra benefit concert. THE ASCETIC-LOOKING Lominago's early artistic inclination were toward the old masters of Western Europe. Among his favorites, he said, were Uccello, Lorenzetti, Memling, Van Eyck and Poussin. He said he especially admired their patient, meticulous manner of applying paint in layers. The modern preference for a single quick application struck him as "vulgar." Lominago was introduced to icon painting -- clandestinely, he says -- a decade ago by Archimandrite Alipi, Abbot of the Perchersky monastery.
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