Pinchuk, Veniamin Borisovich

Born Nov. 17 (30), 1908, in the village of Kutuzovo, in present-day Zhitomir Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. Soviet sculptor. People’s Artist of the USSR (1969). Member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1970). Member of the CPSU since 1942.

Pinchuk studied with V. I. Mukhina at the Moscow Vkhute-mas (State Higher Arts and Technical Studios) from 1928 to 1930, and with A. T. Matveev at the Academy of Arts in Leningrad from 1930 to 1932. He has taught at the I. E. Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in Leningrad since 1948. He was made a professor there in 1962.

Pinchuk’s sculpture is civic in character. His portraits and monuments are marked by simple composition and by strictly and clearly modeled forms. Among the artist’s works are V. I. Lenin at Razliv (plaster of paris, 1935, V. I. Lenin Central Museum, Moscow), the group V. I. Lenin and J. V. Stalin in Gorky (with R. K. Taurit; plaster of paris, 1949, State Prize of the USSR, 1950), a bust of M. I. Kalinin (marble, 1950, Russian Museum, Leningrad), and monuments to Lenin in the Moscow Kremlin (bronze, granite, and labradorite; 1967, architect S. B. Speranskii) and in Krasnoiarsk (bronze and granite, 1970).