In Past Show

RUSSIA S.XX at Surikov Foundation

A master of the Russian realist school of painting and brilliant educator who developed a whole galaxy of fine artists. He belongs to a generation of masters of Russian and Soviet Art whose work flourished during the war and postwar years. He has worked mainly in genre painting, portraiture, landscape, and still life, travelling around his country and visiting abroad. All the creativity of the master is a song about his beloved nature of Russia.

Alexander Timofeevich Danilichev was born in Zadanovo Tula in 1921. After graduation from the Artistic Institute of Moscow in 1937, he studied at the Surikov Institute of Arts from 1939 to 1945. In 1943, while still attending the Surikov, Danilichev and 11 other academically accomplished artists were evacuated to Samarkand (Uzbekistan) for the duration of the war. It looked like Moscow might fall to the Germans so the Soviet government decided to evacuate their most promising artists who they saw as cultural assets. He returned and received his doctorate at the Surikov Institute in 1947. From the beginning of his studies in fine arts, Alexander stood out as an advanced student with the State permitting his participation in graduate exhibitions, which was simply unheard of. Alexander was very active in Moscow from 1948 when he first began exhibiting. In Spain, during Franco's regime (1939 - 1975), the intelligentsia was eliminated. When it was realized that this purge ended Spain's tradition of great art, they asked their Russian neighbor to loan them a master artist to reestablish a great art tradition in their country. Danilichev was the artist sent and is still revered in Spain as Russia's greatest Soviet Era Artist. Alexander taught at the Surikov Institute as the head of his own studio beginning in 1960. Danilichev was one of the most famous and popular painters of the Soviet Union. He died in 1994.

Awards: People´s Painter of the USSR, Dean of the People´s Painters of the USSR until his dead, Honored Artist of Russia, People´s Painter of Spain, Member of the Union of Russian Artists.

Exhibitions: Danilichev performed numerous exhibitions in Russia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Mongolia, as well as over 60 exhibitions in Western Europe. From the year 2000 to 2012 his works have been exhibited in sixteen museums throughout Spain in the collective exhibition "Rusia Siglo XX".

Collections (partial list): Alma-Ata Museum in Kiev, Dolores Tomás 20th Century Russian Paintings Collection, Museum of History in Saint Petersburg, Museum of Kalini in Moscow, Museum of Lenin in Moscow, Museum of Russia in Saint Petersburg, Museum of Russian Art in Kiev, Museum of the Revolution in Moscow, The Military Museum in Saint Petersburg, The Lazare Gallery Collection, Tretyakov Gallery (Museum) in Moscow, Zugansk Museum in Kiev.

Dolores Tomás´s Collection includes 166 paintings by Alexandr Danilichev.