The artist Natalia Grigorieva represents an ancient Moscow genus of Filippov-Polyanskij-Parfentjev and is the granddaughter of the artist Natalia Gorodkova-Parfentjeva (1896–1929).
"My great-great-grandfather Ivan Alexsandrovich Parfentjev was a son of a mathematician. His brother Nikolai Nikolaevich Parfentjev, a well-known mathematician and mechanic, worked at the Kazan University, lectured in Paris, where he had a son who stayed in France. Nikolai Nikolaevich returned to Kazan to found a School of Mathematicians. Descendants of Nikolai Nikolaevich Parfentjev live in Paris.
Great-grandmother Natalia Dmitrievna Gorodkova-Parfentjeva got an art education, was a member of "Nov-Art" artel, where Mark Chagall used to work. In 1929 at the age of 33, she died of tuberculosis. Almost all of her works have been lost, however, those that have survived are of absolute artistic value.
My great-grandfather Ivan Aleksandrovich Parfentjev is a world-famous entomologist, the author of a unique collection of butterflies destroyed after the revolution, which largely determined his decision to emigrate. In 1919 he was going to leave Russia forever. My great-grandfather, standing on the deck of the boat leaving from Odessa to Europe with his wife-artist and a small son, changed his mind at the last moment and the family returned to Moscow, where he continued to work at the Moscow University. Before the revolution our family owned real estate in the Moscow Arbat district. Filling in one of the Soviet papers the grandfather due to a kind of scientist’s distraction stated out in the line social position – "the landlord" – and had a lot of trouble afterwards. The Moscow University’ students comprehension and atmosphere have changed dramatically. Ivan Parfentjev realized that for scientific work he still had to leave Russia and then worked at the University of Chicago in the United States. My grandfather Andrey Parfentjev did not support the relationship with him and hide the fact that his father lived and worked in America. In the Lenin Library in Moscow, my mother saw my great-grandfather's articles published in American scientific journals."
Natalia Grigorieva
"How talented they all are! Were — and continue to be, new kids play, draw, do science and languages, and when talking about our exhausted gene pool, I have a strong objection: Parfentjevy and Polianskiy not yet extinct, although girls are married, their children hold other names, and generally have spread all over the world... the Descendants of this great noble intelligent Russian family that survived wars and revolution, the terror and the humiliation, hard labor camps, exile, in a word, all what is believed to be a honest man in inhuman circumstances — are sitting next to us in the subway. Occasionally we recognize them".