Moravov, Aleksandr

Born Dec 8 (20), 1878, in the village of Velikaia Motovilovka, present-day Fastov Raion, Kiev Oblast; died Feb. 23, 1951, in Moscow. Soviet painter. Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR (1946). Member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1949).

From 1897 to 1902, Moravov studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture under A. E. Arkhipov and N. A. Kasatkin, He taught in a number of art schools in Moscow and was a member of the peredvizhniki (the “wanderers,” a progressive art movement) from 1904 and of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia from 1923. Depicting the new life in the countryside during the Soviet period, he developed the traditions of peredvizhnik genre paintings on the peasant theme (In the Volost Office of Civil Registration, 1928, Tret’iakov Gallery). He also created works on historical and revolutionary subjects (The Decembrists in Chita, 1911, State Historical Museum, Moscow; the triptych Lenin’s Arrival in Petrograd, 1931–33, Central Museum of the Armed Forces of the USSR, Moscow; and The Lena Shootings of 1912, 1937, the Lenin Central Museum, Moscow).