Blind Sculptor Ballerina Lina Po proves the fact – talented people are talented in everything. It is difficult to understand how the blind could convey not only external similarity, but also the character and mood. It is like a miracle. Lina had the rare gift of “inner vision”, or, as engineers, spatial imagination, brought to a high degree of perfection. Deprived of view, she “saw” things in her imagination vivid and three-dimensional, as in the bulk film. Sometimes, with touch caught the details and subtleties unnoticed by sighted sculptors – professionals. In this hard to believe. But it was so.
Polina Mikhailovna Gorenshtein (January 18, 1899 – November 26, 1948), known as Lina Po, was born in Yekaterinoslav of Russian Empire in the last year of the nineteenth century. She was fond of music and dancing, wrote poems, painted and sculpted. She was talented in many things, but chose ballet as her career. Since 1921, young ballerina Lina Po lives in Moscow, performing in ballets, and her choreography is warmly welcomed by the audience. She often takes a pencil to capture an interesting movement, pose, or rotation. Every day is filled with music and dancing. But in 1934, disaster struck. Lina became seriously ill: paralysis of the arms and legs, loss of vision.
Lina Po spent two years in the hospital. She managed to recover, and the ability to move returned, but there was a tragic mark – total blindness. After leaving the hospital, she shows her first, even imperfect figurines to the prominent artist Mikhail Nesterov. Infinitely demanding in everything that concerns art, Mikhail endorses her work. After meeting with him Lina Po has not decided anything for herself. It was hard for her to believe that she regained her place in life.
At that time, Lina, together with the sisters lived in Stoleshnikov lane in a communal apartment. She had difficulty walking. Tormented by the pain – a consequence of paralysis. But as soon as the pain let go, talented woman molded. Just for herself …
