Cheremnykh, Mikhail Mikhailovich

Born Oct. 18 (30), 1890, in Tomsk; died Aug. 7, 1962, in Moscow. Soviet graphic artist. People’s Artist of the RSFSR (1952); member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (from 1958).

Cheremnykh studied with K. A. Korovin and S. V. Maliutin at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture from 1911 to 1917. He taught at the V. I. Surikov Moscow Art Institute from 1949 to 1962, becoming a professor there in 1950. Cheremnykh was the creator of the Okna ROSTA and one of the creators of the Okna TASS (seeOKNA ROSTA and OKNA TASS). He worked for several newspapers and for the magazines Krokodil (from 1922), Bezbozhnik u stanka, and Smekhach.

Cheremnykh’s work is rich in satiric allegory and symbolism, tending toward grotesque solutions that have a tremendous effect upon the viewer. In his posters and caricatures dealing with international and domestic topics, he frequently used montages of drawings devoted to related subjects and different graphic techniques (for example, simple stylized silhouetting or great tonal and linear detail). Examples of his posters are We Must Be Ready (Okna ROSTA, no. 744, 1920) and May the Antifascist World Front Increase That the Knife Might Fall From This Claw (1938). Cheremnykh also worked as a book illustrator (for example, drawings to the works of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, charcoal and white pigment, 1936–39, Literary Museum, Moscow) and as a stage artist (for A. F. Pashchenko’s Madame de Pompadour, Leningrad Malyi Opera Theater, 1939). A recipient of the State Prize of the USSR in 1942, he was also awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor and various medals.