Ioganson, Boris Vladimirovich

Born July 13 (25), 1893, in Moscow; died there Feb. 25, 1973. Soviet painter. People’s Artist of the USSR (1943); member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947). Hero of Socialist Labor (1968). Member of the CPSU from 1943.

Ioganson studied under N. A. Kasatkin, S. V. Maliutin, and K. A. Korovin at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture from 1912 to 1918. He was a member of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR) from 1922 to 1931. He taught at the Leningrad I. E. Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture from 1937 to 1961, becoming a professor there in 1939. He began teaching at the Moscow V. I. Surikov Arts Institute in 1964. Ioganson was the vice-president of the Academy of Arts of the USSR from 1953 to 1958 and was its president from 1958 to 1962. He was the first secretary of the board of the Union of Artists of the USSR from 1965 to 1968. He became the editor in chief of the encyclopedia Art of the Countries and Peoples of the World in 1962.

Ioganson develops the traditions of Russian realist painting of the second half of the 19th century in his work. His genre paintings of the late 1920’s are characterized by clear composition and vivid colors. They are distinguished by the detailed narration and the concrete social characterization of figures typical of the paintings of the members of the AKhRR. Ioganson’s paintings, such as A Soviet Court (Tret’iakov Gallery, 1928) and The Workers’ Faculty Is on the Go (also known as The Students, Kiev Museum of Russian Art, 1928), convey the everyday lives and work of the Soviet people and aspects of the new Soviet life.

In the 1930’s, Ioganson turned to revolutionary and historical themes. These themes appear in the paintings The Interrogation of Communists (Tret’iakov Gallery, 1933) and At the Old Urals Factory (also known as Demidov’s Urals, Tret’iakov Gallery, 1937; State Prize of the USSR, 1941). By personifying opposing class forces engaged in dramatic conflict, Ioganson strives for genuine historicism of content and for the embodiment of the heroic enthusiasm of the revolutionary struggle in these pictures. His carefully worked-out compositions are based on the juxtaposition of figures belonging to opposing sides. His emotional, painterly brushwork is marked by a wealth of color hues and by coloristic unity. Both composition and brushwork are subordinated to the task of the psychological characterization of valiant Communists.

In 1950, Ioganson and two collaborators painted V. I. Lenin Addresses the Third Komsomol Congress (Tret’iakov Gallery; State Prize of the USSR, 1951). Ioganson was a delegate at the Twenty-second and Twenty-third Congresses of the CPSU. He was awarded three Orders of Lenin, the Badge of Honor, and various medals.