artist
author of the Polyphantom-Art
author of the Polyphantom-Art
Olga Stein
an experimental movement in art, where the main artistic material is a polychrome Phantom, an internal illusory phenomenon that arises in a person during the visual perception of an object.
Polyphantom-Art
Biography
This is not a classical vita, but only the key facts that have shaped my personality and my path in art.
July 3, 1971
I was born in Soviet Kazakhstan. When I was six months old, my mother left me in an orphanage, and we never met again. At the age of four, I was adopted by my step-uncle and his wife.
My childhood was woven from contrasts: rare moments of joy gave way to harsh daily life. In the eyes of society, we appeared to be a wealthy and respectable family, but in reality, I constantly faced cruelty and physical punishment from my adoptive mother. My father did not intervene. I was the only child in the family, but I never became a loved one.
1988
I graduated from secondary school. It was then that my adoptive parents revealed the truth to me: they admitted they had taken me from the orphanage only because Soviet social morality required it. In that moment, I lost my family and home for the second time. I had to leave, and thus my adult life began.
1988 – 1990 Move to Russia and studies at the Chelyabinsk College of Culture in the Department of Theatre Arts.
1990 — first marriage and move to Rostov-on-Don.
1991 — birth of my son, Roman.
1994 — divorce and the beginning of an independent path.
1995 – 2012 My professional life was successfully connected with marketing and advertising. It was during this period that I began to master the basics of graphic design and study the specifics of producing and promoting audio and video content.
2012 - Second marriage to Klemens Stein and relocation to Germany for permanent residence. After immigration, mastering the language, and a period of adaptation, I finally had the opportunity to devote time to self-development. I am deeply grateful to my husband for his multifaceted support: it allowed me to receive a private art education, strengthened my self-belief, and gave impetus to my artistic activity.
2020 – 2024 Years of intensive private study in composition, drawing, painting, and color theory. I combined practical work with a deep study of the heritage of the great masters.
My mentor was Nikolai Yuryevich Fedotov — founder of the St. Petersburg studio "Practicum," designer and publisher, and a graduate of the Repin Academy of Arts. It was he who opened the intellectual dimension of painting to me. Thanks to his original teaching method, I acquired the professional tools that allowed me to comprehend composition and work confidently with color and form.
Emergence of Style Over time, I mastered the language of figurative painting in all its complexity. Parallel to this, my interest in color as a self-sufficient phenomenon grew — this is how the Polyphantom-Art direction emerged.
2025 Creation of the first work within the Polyphantom-Art project — the canvas "Mother."
Color has become a separate world for me — alive, changing, and infinitely rich. This exploration continues in the projects "Extraction" and "The Presence of Absence."
July 3, 1971
I was born in Soviet Kazakhstan. When I was six months old, my mother left me in an orphanage, and we never met again. At the age of four, I was adopted by my step-uncle and his wife.
My childhood was woven from contrasts: rare moments of joy gave way to harsh daily life. In the eyes of society, we appeared to be a wealthy and respectable family, but in reality, I constantly faced cruelty and physical punishment from my adoptive mother. My father did not intervene. I was the only child in the family, but I never became a loved one.
1988
I graduated from secondary school. It was then that my adoptive parents revealed the truth to me: they admitted they had taken me from the orphanage only because Soviet social morality required it. In that moment, I lost my family and home for the second time. I had to leave, and thus my adult life began.
1988 – 1990 Move to Russia and studies at the Chelyabinsk College of Culture in the Department of Theatre Arts.
1990 — first marriage and move to Rostov-on-Don.
1991 — birth of my son, Roman.
1994 — divorce and the beginning of an independent path.
1995 – 2012 My professional life was successfully connected with marketing and advertising. It was during this period that I began to master the basics of graphic design and study the specifics of producing and promoting audio and video content.
2012 - Second marriage to Klemens Stein and relocation to Germany for permanent residence. After immigration, mastering the language, and a period of adaptation, I finally had the opportunity to devote time to self-development. I am deeply grateful to my husband for his multifaceted support: it allowed me to receive a private art education, strengthened my self-belief, and gave impetus to my artistic activity.
2020 – 2024 Years of intensive private study in composition, drawing, painting, and color theory. I combined practical work with a deep study of the heritage of the great masters.
My mentor was Nikolai Yuryevich Fedotov — founder of the St. Petersburg studio "Practicum," designer and publisher, and a graduate of the Repin Academy of Arts. It was he who opened the intellectual dimension of painting to me. Thanks to his original teaching method, I acquired the professional tools that allowed me to comprehend composition and work confidently with color and form.
Emergence of Style Over time, I mastered the language of figurative painting in all its complexity. Parallel to this, my interest in color as a self-sufficient phenomenon grew — this is how the Polyphantom-Art direction emerged.
2025 Creation of the first work within the Polyphantom-Art project — the canvas "Mother."
Color has become a separate world for me — alive, changing, and infinitely rich. This exploration continues in the projects "Extraction" and "The Presence of Absence."
Education and Research
2020 – 2022
Commencement of the course "Composition"
The total duration of study in this field was 15 months.
Teacher and Methodologist: Nikolai Yuryevich Fedotov — artist, designer, publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of the online-magazine "Obraz" (St. Petersburg).
Abridged Thesis Program of the Course
2022 "Analytical and Research Course: "Painting — Means. Methods. Techniques"
Teacher and Methodologist: Nikolai Yuryevich Fedotov.
Duration of study: 8 months.
After mastering the laws of composition, I moved to the next level — an analytical and research course. The program was a synergy of active practical research and an extensive theoretical part, including the study of specialized literature and the development of visual literacy.
As part of the course, we studied the works of Kazimir Malevich, V.N. Volkov, Wassily Kandinsky, Mikhail Matyushin, Josef Albers, Johannes Itten, and alongside other well-known artists. We conducted optical experiments and recorded their results.
For example, here is a small section of the course program dedicated to the study of color:
Color
Simultaneously, the acquired knowledge was implemented into practice: we learned to work with color within a composition. It was a colossal intellectual challenge.
Through this work, I dived deep into the science of color, discovering its internal forces: relativity, interaction, and psychological impact on humans. It was a time of revelations, profound insights, and the finding of new meanings. Each work became a step into the unknown — a place where color goes beyond form and conventional perception.
Thus, I discovered the fourth dimension of color — Polyphantom.
The world around us is not only polychromatic but polyphantomic. One is inseparable from the other. This is exactly what my art is about.
2020 – 2022
Commencement of the course "Composition"
The total duration of study in this field was 15 months.
Teacher and Methodologist: Nikolai Yuryevich Fedotov — artist, designer, publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of the online-magazine "Obraz" (St. Petersburg).
Abridged Thesis Program of the Course
- Capturing Viewer Attention
- Anatomy of Vision
- Neuroesthetics
- Centers of Attention in the Image
- Formal Stimuli
- Subject Stimuli
- Form and Content. Categories of Composition
- Strategies of Genius
- Methodology
- The Viewer and Visual Thinking
- Theme in Composition and How to Choose It
- Principle of Polarity
- Binary Opposition
- Conflict Theory
- Plot
- Primary Elements
- Point
- Line
- Plane
- Silhouette and Spot
- Visualization
- Light. Color. Color Space
- Tonal Solution
- Texture
- Means of Expression
- Image
- Contrast
- Contrast of Perception
- Contrast of Form
- Color Contrast
- Visual Thinking
- Hierarchy of Relationships
- Color
- Color Relativity
- Color Models
- Color and Paint
- Coloristics
- Methods of Harmonization
2022 "Analytical and Research Course: "Painting — Means. Methods. Techniques"
Teacher and Methodologist: Nikolai Yuryevich Fedotov.
Duration of study: 8 months.
After mastering the laws of composition, I moved to the next level — an analytical and research course. The program was a synergy of active practical research and an extensive theoretical part, including the study of specialized literature and the development of visual literacy.
As part of the course, we studied the works of Kazimir Malevich, V.N. Volkov, Wassily Kandinsky, Mikhail Matyushin, Josef Albers, Johannes Itten, and alongside other well-known artists. We conducted optical experiments and recorded their results.
For example, here is a small section of the course program dedicated to the study of color:
Color
- Nature of light and color.
- Spectrum. Objects do not possess color.
- Light + eye + brain = "color"
- Color constancy — the cause of illusions.
- Light, color, or paint — what does the artist work with?
- Subject and local color. Metamerism.
- Color environment. Reflex.
- Color science — key figures.
- Chromatic accordion. Architektons. Color coordinates
- Harmonic combinations. Complementary colors
- Characteristics of color
- Color and tonal relationships.
- Active or passive tonality — the basis of color scheme.
- In which gamut to work? Munsell table.
- 3-component theory.
- Basic colors.
- Color harmony.
- Color gamut.
- Color scheme (Colorit)
- Harmonic combinations:
- Complementary colors.
- Limited palette
Simultaneously, the acquired knowledge was implemented into practice: we learned to work with color within a composition. It was a colossal intellectual challenge.
Through this work, I dived deep into the science of color, discovering its internal forces: relativity, interaction, and psychological impact on humans. It was a time of revelations, profound insights, and the finding of new meanings. Each work became a step into the unknown — a place where color goes beyond form and conventional perception.
Thus, I discovered the fourth dimension of color — Polyphantom.
The world around us is not only polychromatic but polyphantomic. One is inseparable from the other. This is exactly what my art is about.
Some of my research and experiments on the study
of contrast and the properties of color (2022-2023)
of contrast and the properties of color (2022-2023)
