Soviet artist Boris Vasilievich Korneyev 1922-1973

Soviet artist Boris Vasilievich Korneyev was born on February 15, 1922 in Petrozavodsk. When he was two years old, his parents moved to Leningrad. Korneyev is a family of hereditary Petersburg workers of the Obukhovny Plant (now Bolshevik). Here worked grandfather, father, and the mother of the artist. Boris grew up in a family where there was no special wealth, but lived amicably, interestingly, loved art, and music. Everyone could play the old piano, which stood in their apartment. And since childhood Korneyev loved to draw.
The studio of fine arts at the Nevsky House of Culture, which he began to attend was then directed by VZ Zhuravlev – a man of versatile knowledge, and a music lover. He was the first teacher of Boris, who played an important role in the fate of the future artist. According Zhuravlev, the future artist stood out among other students of his studio. In addition, while visiting the Nevsky House of Culture, the president of the All-Russian Academy of Arts, I. I. Brodsky, noted watercolors and drawings by Korneyev.

In the autumn of 1938, after the ninth grade, he applied to the Leningrad Art College, commonly called “Tavrichesky”, and enrolled there. At this time it, and the newly organized Secondary Art School at the All-Russian Academy of Arts in Leningrad opened the path to higher artistic education.

And Boris was already seriously thinking about art, learning to “see” it. He did not miss a single art exhibition. Besides, increased interest in the national classical artistic heritage.

At the school, Boris studied drawing, watercolors, plastic anatomy and perspective. Art became for him a matter, and not just a hobby. Unfortunately, the young artist had to forget about his plans and dreams about art. The Great Patriotic War began, and Boris Korneyev volunteered from the third year to the front. It was a heavy, hungry and cold Leningrad winter of 1941/42. Korneyev belonged to the generation of Soviet people who went off to fight right from school. He returned home only in the autumn of 1945.

Soviet artist Boris Vasilievich Korneyev

The generation of the “forties, fatal years”, having returned quickly matured, but with a carefully cherished youthful dream, hurried to catch up the irretrievable time, lived and worked, despite the difficulties, selflessly, just as it recently fought. In August 1946, at the end of the last year of the school, Boris Korneev successfully passed examinations to the Rupin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, which he dreamed of since childhood. The institute was then famous for its first veteran students.

Source – B.V. Korneyev, illustrated album. Artists of RSFSR. 1982