Soviet painter Mikhail Platunov 1987-1972

Soviet painter Mikhail Platunov
Born in the village of Cheremis-Turek of Vyatka Province, Mikhail Platunov began to paint under the guidance of his father – a talented self-taught icon painter. In 1906 he graduated from art school in Kazan and entered the Higher Art School of the Imperial Academy of Arts, where his teachers were professors P. Chistyakov and V. Savinsky. After graduation from the Academy in 1914, just the year when the First World War began, he had to serve as the front-line artist. And already after the revolution, he taught at the Petrograd workers’ clubs and schools. In addition, participated in exhibitions of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia, and performed a series of portraits of famous artists. Noteworthy, Soviet painter Mikhail Platunov actively participated in the construction of the young Soviet State. In particular, in the 1925-1931 traveled as part of the All-Union geological expeditions to distant and little-investigated regions of the Polar Urals, Abkhazia, Turkestan, Pechora and Kamchatka. Also, in 1937, by the icebreaker “Sadko” traveled to the Arctic. The accumulated experience, as well as sketches while traveling, formed the basis of subsequent works.

During the Great Patriotic War, he worked in the besieged Leningrad, and created a series of gouaches “Leningrad blockade.” In 1942, evacuated to Yoshkar-Ola, he continued painting. First, his viewers were countrymen, and 2 years later, the exhibition saw the people in London, Warsaw, Moscow and Leningrad.

Meanwhile, in the postwar years Platunov, professor of drawing, Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1954), taught at the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture of Repin. He painted landscapes of Leningrad, as well as thematic paintings and portraits. Author of paintings “The Academy of Sciences” (1941), “House”, “Over the water”, “Winter groove” (all 1942), “The first rays of the sun (G.Ya. Sedov)”, “Portrait of a schoolgirl,” “Shadow Day “(all 1950),” Portrait of textile workers “(1951), “White night”, “Autumn evening” (both 1957), “On the arable land”, “Herd” (both 1959), the “Old Paris” (1961), “Grand avenue”, “Summer Garden” (both 1964), and others.

Mikhail Platunov died June 18, 1972 in Leningrad. His works are in the State Russian Museum, State Tretyakov Gallery, the National Museum of. T.E. Evseev, and Kozmodemyansk art-historical museum of A. Grigoryev, as well as in museums and private collections in Russia and abroad.

Soviet painter Mikhail Platunov