Korzhev Gely Mikhailovich

People’s Artist of the USSR. Full Member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR. In 1968-1975 he was the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Artists’ Union of the USSR. One of the major artists of the ‘Severe style’. He studied at the Surikov Moscow State Art Institute (1945-1950), where S.V. Gerasimov and V.V. Pochitalov were his teachers. He painted monumental canvases on subjects from the Revolution and contemporary life. In 1961 he won the Gold Medal of the Academy of Arts of the USSR. In 1966 he was awarded with I.E. Repin State Prize of the USSR for his Communists triptych. Since 1967, he was the head of the Department of the Monumental Decorative Painting in Moscow Higher College of Arts and Crafts, in 1968-1976 he directed the painting studio of the Academy of Arts of the USSR in Moscow. He was a master of the monumental historical and social metaphorical works. The artist’s works are in the State Tretyakov Gallery, State Russian Museum.