Savitskii, Mikhail

Born Feb. 18, 1922, in the village of Zveniachichi, Vitebsk Oblast, Byelorussian SSR. Soviet painter. People’s Artist of the Byelorussian SSR (1972); corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1973).

Savitskii studied at the V. I. Surikov Moscow Art Institute from 1951 to 1957 with F. A. Modorov and D. K. Mochal’skii. His paintings deal mainly with the heroic feats of the Byelorussian people during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. They possess a dramatic, civic-minded quality and express the inner feelings of the individuals depicted. The silhouettes are clearly outlined and rhythmic, and the spatial planes are strongly contrasted. Savitskii’s works include Bread (1968), Workers (1968), Punishment by Death (1969; State Prize of the Byelorussian SSR, 1970), the cycle Heroic Byelorussia (including The Partisan Madonna, 1967, Tret’iakov Gallery), the mural Patriotic War: 1944 (1970–71; State Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War, Minsk; fiberboard, tempera, and lacquer; State Prize of the USSR, 1973). Savitskii has been awarded two orders and various medals.