Gritsai, Aleksei Mikhailovich

Born Feb. 22 (Mar. 7), 1914, in St. Petersburg. Soviet painter. People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1963). Member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1964).

From 1932 to 1939, Gritsai studied at the Academy of Arts in Leningrad under I.I. Brodskii and V. N. Iakovlev. He has taught at the V. I. Surikov Moscow Art Institute from 1948 to 1952 and from 1964 to the present. He has been a professor there since 1966. In his landscapes Gritsai follows the tradition of Russian landscape painting of the second half of the 19th century. This is especially evident in his In the Zhiguli: A Stormy Day (1948–50, Tret’iakov Gallery), which won the State Prize of the USSR in 1951, and in his Black Water (1967, painter’s private collection). He has painted portraits, such as the group portrait A Session of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (in collaboration with V. P. Efanov and others, 1951, the Russian Museum in Leningrad), which won the State Prize of the USSR in 1952, and has also painted works on industrial themes, such as The Electric Furnaces (1947, Tret’iakov Gallery). He has been awarded the Order of the Patriotic War Second Class and medals.