Aleksandr Gerasimov

Aleksandr Mikhailovich Gerasimov (; 12 August 1881 – 23 July 1963) was a Soviet and Russian painter. He was a leading proponent of socialist realism in the visual arts, and painted Joseph Stalin and other Soviet leaders. Biography Gerasimov was born on 12 August 1881 in Kozlov (now Michurinsk) in Tambov Governorate, Russian Empire. He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture from 1903 to 1915. There he championed traditional realistic representational art against the avant-garde. He served in the army during World War I and the Russian Civil War. Subsequently, he returned to his hometown to become a stage designer, helping to present plays glorifying the Revolution and the Soviet government. In 1925, Gerasimov returned to Moscow and set up a studio, combining techniques of academic realism with an Impressionistic light touch. He favored a style known as heroic realism, which featured images of revolutionary leaders such as Vladimir Lenin as larger-than-life heroes. As Stalin tightened his grip on the country, Gerasimov concentrated on official portraits, such as Stalin and Voroshilov in the Kremlin, for which he won a Stalin Prize in 1941. He produced a large number of heroic portraits of Kliment Voroshilov, to the point that Nikita Khrushchev would later accuse Voroshilov of having spent most of his time in Gerasimov's studio, to the detriment of his responsibilities as People's Commissar of Defense.