Bogdesko, Ilia Trofimovich

Born on Apr. 20, 1923, in the village of Botushany near the city of Rybnitsa, Podol’sk Province, Ukrainian SSR. Soviet graphic artist. People’s Artist of the USSR (1963). Member of the CPSU since 1968.

Bogdesko graduated from the I. E. Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in Leningrad in 1951 and has been working in the Moldavian SSR since 1953. He has created lyrical, tensely emotional illustrations for N. V. Gogol’s Sorochintsy Fair (India ink, pen, and brush; 1951), A. S. Pushkin’s Gypsies (black watercolor; 1956), and the Moldavian folk ballad Mioritsa (watercolor and tempera; 1966) and a series of color engravings, My Homeland (1961–63). A recipient of the State Prize of the Moldavian SSR in 1966, Bogdesko was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.