VIKTOR KONOVALOV (Uidol, Vladimir region 1912 – Moscow 1995)
Russian painter and graphic designer. He was born into a family of modest conditions in the small village of Uidol. Despite the opposition of his parents, he moved to Moscow with the ambition of becoming an artist. In 1936 he entered the Surikov Art Institute, where he studied under the guidance of great masters, such as Shemyakin, Cherhnishev and Grabar, who called him the “Russian Tiepolo” for the perfection of his drawing and for his refined palette of colors. While studying at the Surikov, he met the artist Tatyana Kovrigina, who became his wife and assistant in the realization of numerous frescoes.
In 1942 he leaved for the front and fought in the battle of Stalingrad, of which he will be one of the few survivors (only 3 soldiers in his regiment) and for which he will receive a medal of merit. In 1943, at Grabar’s request, he was recalled from the front and evacuated to Perm. In 1944-1945, as part of the Border Troops Art Studio, he made some trips to Warsaw, Prague, Budapest. In 1947 he graduated and the following year he became a member of the Union of Artists of Moscow.
His intense artistic activity includes, among many works, the decoration of the metro station “Kievskaya” in Moscow, for which he took part in the creation of mosaics and frescoes celebrating the Ukrainian people, the triptych The Victory Banner over Berlin at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, the mosaic Liberation at the Institute of Asian and African Countries in Moscow, and the fresco in the lobby of the Ukraine hotel in Moscow.