Zvyagin, Mikhail Leonidovich

At the beginning of World War II , the father of Mikhail Zvyagin went to the front and soon died. Mikhail, together with his mother and younger sister, ended up in besieged Leningrad , where they survived the most hungry and difficult time - the winter of 1942. In 1943 the family was evacuated from Leningrad near Vologda .

In 1944, shortly after the blockade was lifted and before the war ended, the family returned to Leningrad, and Mikhail Zvyagin entered the drawing circle at the Palace of Pioneers (now the Palace of Young Creativity), where Maria Alekseevna Gorokhova was his teacher.

Later, childhood impressions of the blockade and the post-war years became one of the constant themes of Mikhail Zvyagin’s work, and were also reflected in the paintings “Blockade” in 1987 (oil on canvas, 120x160), “Disabled person from Valaam Island” 1981 (oil on canvas, 120x100) and the sculpture "Blockade Madonna" 2002, bronze.

In the years 1945-1949 he studied at the Architectural and Art Craft College at the Alfrey branch. After graduation, he entered the school at the Academy of Arts, but was expelled a year later due to poor performance in mathematics. In 1951, Mikhail Zvyagin was drafted into the army. After demobilization in 1954, he got a job at a weaving factory, in a fabric painting workshop, and in 1959, as a textile artist, he presented to the public his first work at the Exhibition of Leningrad Artists in the “Applied Art” section. In 1961, Mikhail Zvyagin graduated from the Painting Department of the Leningrad Art College. Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov, having received the specialty of a teacher of drawing and drawing. And in 1962 he became a member of the Union of Artists of the USSR .

In 1965, the first personal exhibition of Zvyagin's works was held in Leningrad. His next solo exhibitions in Leningrad took place in 1975 and in 1987. In 1990, at the height of Perestroika, Mikhail Zvyagin held solo exhibitions in Moscow and West Berlin .

For more than half a century of intense creative activity, Mikhail Zvyagin has shown himself in almost all genres of painting, from still life to portrait , from landscape to animal painting , from genre paintings to paintings on eschatological and biblical subjects. No less wide range of stylistic techniques - from the gloomy realism of industrial landscapes of the 60s - the beginning of the 70s ("To work" 1963, gouache, cardboard, 79x98) to abstract compositions ("Plastic No. 3" 1978, oil on canvas, 160x135 ) In the 80s, the picturesque language of Mikhail Zvyagin became more and more metaphorical, and from the point of view of the subject, paintings occupy a special place, in which the grotesque images of violence and bacchanalia of triumphant and intoxicated by the power of monsters are embodied. One of the landmark and fundamental works of this period for the artist himself was “Babi Yar” 1981-1985 (oil on canvas, 280x240), in which the mass execution of Jews by the Nazis near Kiev in 1941 was turned into a heartbreaking picture of the torture of human flesh and the death of the human spirit. With all the tragedy and fury of many large-scale paintings by Mikhail Zvyagin of the 80s - 90s of the last century, his inherent love of life invariably expressed itself in female portraits and series of nudes, sensual, sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes full of inner drama (for example, “Nude . Evening "1978, hardboard, oil, 96x93).

At the beginning of the 2000s, Mikhail Zvyagin turned to sculpture and repeated a number of his paintings in bronze, including The Blockade Madonna, which was presented to St. Petersburg on the eve of the wide celebration of the 65th anniversary of the lifting of the blockade. However, after the end of the festive events, the city authorities curtailed the competitive procedures they began to install the sculpture and refused the gift ^{[1] [2]} .

Of the sculptural works of Mikhail Zvyagin in recent years, a monument to A.S. deserves special mention. Pushkin, installed on the territory of the Russian Consulate in New York and in the Ostafyevo estate museum near Moscow, as well as the sculpture “Sorrow” dedicated to the victims of the siege of Leningrad (donated by Irina Shostakovich, the widow of Dmitry Shostakovich, to the German town of Gorish , where the Shostakovich music festival takes place )

The works of Mikhail Zvyagin are represented in museum collections and collections of the Russian Museum , the Hermitage , the Norton Dodge Museum of Modern Art , the Berlin Wall Museum , the museums of Omsk, Tula, Voronezh, Smolensk, as well as a number of private collections in Western Europe and the USA.

In addition to his own work, Mikhail Zvyagin is known as an expert and collector of works of art. Together with his son Leonid Zvyagin, he is the owner of one of the largest and most representative private collections of African art. The collection they collected includes terracotta, bronze, wooden sculpture, ivory, parchment books, masks and fabrics.

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  Mikhail Zvyagin. "Babi Yar" (1981-1985), oil on canvas, 280x240 cm.

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  Mikhail Zvyagin. "Philosopher" (1993), cotton, acrylic, oil, 120x91 cm

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  Mikhail Zvyagin. "War - Victory" (2000), tinted plaster, 101 cm

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  Mikhail Zvyagin. "Raven" (1986), cotton, oil, 61x72 cm

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  Mikhail Zvyagin. "Plastic No. 3" (1978), oil on canvas, 160x135 cm

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  Mikhail Zvyagin. "Naked. Evening" (1978), hardboard, oil, 96x93 cm

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  Mikhail Zvyagin. "Plant over the river" (1969)

• Mikhail Zvyagin about the "Blockade Madonna" (inaccessible link)
• Artist Mikhail Zvyagin: "I painted all my life, even in the Leningrad blockade . " Interview for the Encyclopedia of Russian America on the portal RUNYweb.com
• Exhibition of works of African art from the collection of M.L. and L.M. Zvyagins in the State Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin.