Bogorodskii, Fedor Semenovich

Born May 21 (June 2), 1895, in Nizhny Novgorod; died Nov. 3, 1959, in Moscow. Soviet painter. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1946) and corresponding member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1947). Member of the Communist Party from 1917.

During the Civil War (1918–20), Bogorodskii worked in the All-Union Extraordinary Commission (Cheka) in Nizhny Novgorod and was a commissar of a seamen’s detachment on the Volga. He studied at the State Higher Arts and Technical Studio from 1922 to 1924 with A. E. Arkhipov. During these years he performed in the circus and on the estrada (variety stage). In 1924 he became a member of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. His best known works are the cycle Homeless Children (1925–26; Tret’iakov Gallery; Russian Museum, Leningrad; and Museum of Art, Gorky) and such paintings dedicated to the seamen who participated in the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War as Seamen in Ambush (1927–28), Buddy (1932), and Glory to Fallen Heroes (1945; State Prize of the USSR, 1945), all housed in the Tret’iakov Gallery, and They Have Found Their Comrade (1932–33), exhibited in the Central Museum of Armed Forces in Moscow. Bogorodskii taught painting at the All-Union Institute of Cinematography in Moscow (1938–59; professor from 1939). Chairman of the Moscow Division of the Artists’ Union of the USSR from 1955 to 1958, he was awarded two orders and various medals.