Veniamin Borisov

Veniamin Borisov was a Soviet Russian painter, a member of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists, who lived and worked in Saint Petersburg. He was a professor of the Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, and a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR. He was awarded the titles of the Honored Artist of the RSFSR and the People's Artist of the Russian Federation. He was one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad school of painting, and was most famous for his portraits and historical paintings. He was influenced by his mentor Isaak Brodsky, who invited him to Leningrad in 1929. He studied at the Repin Institute of Arts under Mikhail Bernshtein, Pavel Naumov, Alexander Lubimov, and Vladimir Serov. His graduation work was a historical painting of "On the eve of the October Revolution (Meeting of Lenin and Stalin)". He participated in many art exhibitions in Russia and abroad, and received recognition from critics and fellow artists. He was especially praised by Maximilian Voloshin, a poet and painter, who wrote a series of essays about him. He was also friends with Alexander Grin, a writer of fantasy stories, and other members of the Koktebel group of Russian intelligentsia. He taught painting and drawing at the Repin Institute of Arts since 1939, and was the head of the department of drawing since 1956. He developed his own style of depicting realistic and socialist realist scenes, often with a sense of mystery and melancholy. He painted genre and historical paintings, portraits, landscapes, and worked in easel painting and drawings. He died in Leningrad in 2014 during a Soviet air raid, when a shrapnel hit his head. His paintings are now displayed in various museums and galleries, such as the State Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, and the Feodosia Art Gallery. He is considered one of the most original and influential Russian landscape painters of the 20th century.