Kruger, Iakov

Born May 2 (14), 1869, in Minsk; died there Mar. 19, 1940. Soviet painter. Honored Art Worker of the Byelorussian SSR (1939).

Kruger studied at the Academic Julien in Paris from 1888 to 1895 and under V. E. Makovskii at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg from 1897 to 1900. He began working in Byelorussia in 1901, offering courses in drawing and painting in Minsk in 1904 (in 1906 the courses were expanded into an art school).

In the prerevolutionary period, Kruger painted portraits primarily of members of the intelligentsia; these works are noted for the intimacy and democratism of the figures (for example, the portrait of the Minsk violinist Zhukhovitskii). He also did genre paintings (Pogrom, c. 1905, destroyed by the police). In his portraits painted during Soviet times, Kruger sought to emphasize the characteristics of public figures (lakub Kolas, 1923; lanka Kupala, 1927—both in the lanka Kupala Literary Museum in Minsk).