Misha Brusilovsky

Misha Brusilovsky was born on May 7, 1931 in Kiev, Ukraine. His father was a military engineer who was killed in the war, and his mother worked in trade. He had one brother Seva – Vsevolod Brusilovsky (born 1936). [1] In 1938 Misha's father was sent on an extended mission to the Far East, where he went with his whole family. They lived on the In Station in Birakan and Birobidzhan. [1] At the beginning of 1941 the Brusilovsky family returned to Kiev, and the war broke out that June. Misha and his brother Seva were sent to the town of Troitsk [2] in the South Urals to their aunt Raya, their father's sister. Their father went to the front, and their mother stayed in Kiev and joined them later. In 1943, their aunt Raya, a general practitioner and surgeon, was mobilised, and Misha went with her on a medical train. [2] On the medical train he helped the doctors and the injured, and when it would stop for long periods he would go to the nearest villages to exchange salt for groceries for them. [2] [3] Six months later, Brusilovsky returned to Kiev, which had been liberated from Germany. In an attempt to earn some money, he joined a group of boys who shined shoes on the square in front of the train station. Every evening, a grown-up lad with the nickname Kot (Tomcat) [2] would come to the square. He was connected with the local criminal class, and he would take most of the money the boys had earned. If they tried to hide what they had earned, the boys were dealt with harshly. [4] Once, for Kot's birthday, Misha drew his portrait with coloured pencils, and showed it to him. Kot took the drawing, and a while later he brought Brusilovsky to a boarding school for gifted children. [2] One day he came with a very young boy, gave him my box and all the stuff that went with it, and brought me away to a boarding school for gifted children. He walked in to the director's office without knocking, and the director said that they weren't taking in any more children, that we would have to show him some work I had done. Without speaking, Kot put a packet of money on the table and said that there would be no competition and God forbid if I didn't get in. [1] Misha Brusilovsky graduated from the boarding school in 1948 and entered the Sverdlovsk Art College. [1] In 1953 he graduated from the college and entered the Repin Institute of Arts in Leningrad. [1] He graduated from the institute in 1959 and returned to Sverdlovsk, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. [1] He became a member of the Russian union of artists, an honored artist of the Russian Federation, a distinguished member of Russian Academy of Arts, a laureate of the "G. S. Mosin prize" and a winner of the Sverdlovsk region Governor's prize "For outstanding achievements in literature and art". [1] He painted many portraits and historical scenes of Russia and Europe, such as "The Jewish Tailor" (1956), "The Last Day of Pompeii" (1966), "The Siege of Pskov" (1970), "The Judas Kiss" (1972), and "Christ Before the People" (1976). He also painted some landscapes, still lifes, and abstract compositions. He was one of the founders of the World of Art movement, along with his friends Sergei Diaghilev, Leon Bakst, and others. The World of Art aimed to promote the aesthetic values and individuality of the artists, and to revive the traditions of the Russian art. He died in Yekaterinburg on November 3, 2016, at the age of 85. He is regarded as one of the most influential and versatile Russian painters of the latter half of the 20th century.