Vera Gutkina

Vera Gutkina was born in 1953 in Moscow

Vera Gutkina was born in Moscow in 1953 to a family of scientists. Her father, Avram Gutkin, was a physics professor who had served in the Red Army in World War II, and her mother was an engineer. For years she and her father were refused permission to emigrate to Israel.

She earned a master's degree in engineering in 1977 but never worked in the field. She studied painting for several years under the Russian painter Vladimir Shtranikh, a student of Konstantin Korovin.

In 1982 she moved to Israel and settled in Jerusalem. Her work was shown in galleries in Jerusalem and Jaffa and in exhibitions in Tel Aviv, Toronto, Ottawa, New York, Florence and Paris. In Israel her painting became more colorful, and she painted angels, birds, portraits and a portrait of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.

In 1994 she led a legal and public campaign for victims of a fraud by the Israsov association, which took 18 million dollars from 600 immigrant families. She founded the Sod association for the victims. The head of Israsov, Leonid Roitman, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison. She died in 2022.