Meshcheryakov Petr Tikhonovich

Soviet artist-painter. Author of genre and historical paintings on historical and revolutionary themes. Member of the Union of Artists of the USSR. He received his art education at the Kazan Art College named after. N.I. Feshina, from which he graduated in 1914. He studied at the painting department with P. P. Konchalovsky, I. I. Mashkov, R. R. Falk. In 1914 he was mobilized and took part in the imperialist war. Member of the CPSU(b). An active participant in the civil war, he fought near Kazan, Yekaterinburg, and Tsaritsyn. He carried out organizational and artistic work in Birsk, Crimea, etc. In the fall of 1924 he entered the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops (Vkhutemas). He studied at the painting department with P. P. Konchalovsky, I. I. Mashkov, R. R. Falk. Graduated from Vkhutein in 1929. One of the leaders of OMAHR, was a member of the AHR, one of the organizers of RAPH. Pyotr Meshcheryakov is one of the founders of the Moscow Union of Artists. In 1925 he went to Paris with an exhibition of works by Soviet artists. He participated in many all-Union exhibitions, including the major “Fifteen Years of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army” (1933). For the exhibition he presented the painting Battle near the village of Kindery under the leadership of Comrade Azin. Possessing extraordinary organizational skills, Pyotr Meshcheryakov was one of the founders and first director (1939–1940) of the famous Moscow Secondary Art School (MSHS, now the Lyceum on Krymskaya). He put a lot of effort into organizing the school. He was sensitive to the guys, attentive and at the same time strict; they loved him and called him “our Suvorov.” In the 1920s, a convinced Akrovite who adopted the method of socialist realism in the 1930s, the realist artist Pyotr Meshcheryakov, adhered to conservative traditions throughout his creative life. He traveled a lot around the country, painted portraits of leaders and noble people of the country, landscapes and genre paintings on themes popular in the 1930s: “The fight against the Basmachi”, “Joining the collective farm”, “Nadezhda Krupskaya’s speech on the Kama before the soldiers of the Red Army”, “Two brothers”, “Dekulakization”, “In Kuzbass”, “The giant collective farm”, “The Capture of Izhevsk”, “The Capture of Sverdlovsk”, “The Struggle of the Miners of the City of Kizil for Soviet Power”, “Blyukher’s Crossing of the Ufimka River” and others. He went to the front as a correspondent artist (1944–1945), and later worked on paintings about the Great Patriotic War. P. T. Meshcheryakov was the director of the Painting and Exhibition Plant (1948–1951). Reproductions of the artist’s paintings were printed in Izogiz. The works of Pyotr Meshcheryakov are in Russian museums and in private Russian and foreign collections.