Stepan Kolesnikoff
Stepan Fedorovitch Kolesnikoff (Russian: Степан Федорович Колесников, 1879, Russian Empire - 1955, Belgrade, Yugoslavia), was a distinguished Realist painter.
Kolesnikoff was born in a peasant family in a southern province of the Russian Empire. His artistic potentials were recognized early. In 1897 he starts attending an artistic school in Odessa, one of the topmost of its kind in the country. In 1903, Kolesnikoff is accepted on the Imperial Academy of Arts, where his paintings regularly won prizes on the annual Spring exhibitions.
His prolific work in oil and especially in gouache won him the highest regards from the foremost Russian artist of his day Ilya Repin, as evidenced from the contents of their correspondence, now in the Russian archives.
In 1919 he and his family emigrate to the Balkans, and from 1920 he settles in Belgrade, Serbia, where he will spent the most of his life of an emigre. Kolesnikoff was promptly welcomed on the royal court of his new country. Among else, he was given a state assignment to lead the restoration works on numerous paintings and frescoes.
The last twelve years of his life Kolesnikoff suffered from Parkinsons' disease. His remains are buried in the Russian Necropolis, a section of the Belgrade's New Graveyard.
References & further reading
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