Studied at the Drawing School of the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of Arts (1914–1915); S. M. Zeidenberg’s private art studio (1915–1916); the New Artistic Workshop studio (1916– 1918) under M. V. Dobuzhinsky, A. Ye. Yakovlev and V. I. Shukhaev; at VKhUTEMAS, Pg (1922). Exhibited from 1919. Member of the Leningrad Branch of the RSFSR Union of Artists. Worked as an artist at the poster studio of the Proletkult organisation in Petrograd (1918), Academia and other publishing houses and periodicals (1923–1931), the First State Children’s Theatre in Moscow (1921–1922), the Crooked Mirror Theatre, the Carousel and the Balaganchik cabaret theatres in Petrograd–Leningrad (1920s), the Bolshoi Drama Theatre (1924–1925), the Leningrad State Academic Drama Theatre (1925 – early 1930s) and D. G. Gutman’s Satire Theatre (1926); chief director and creative director at the Leningrad Comedy Theatre (1935–1949, 1955–1968), chief director and designer at the Leningrad New Theatre, now, the Lensovet Theatre (1951–1955). Taught drawing at Higher Courses for Political Educators in Kharkov (1920–1922), teacher and head of the Studio of Young Theatre Artists affiliated with the Leningrad Branch of the Union of Soviet Artists (1933–1937); taught at Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinema (1954–1968), Professor (from 1960). Honoured Worker of Art of the RSFSR (1939), Honoured Artist of the RSFSR (1945), People’s Artist of the USSR (1960). Awarded two Orders of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Star, medals For the Defence of Leningrad and For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945. Main collections: A. A. Bakhrushin Central Theatre Museum, State Museum of the History of Russian Literature (both Moscow), Museum of the N. P. Akimov Academic Comedy Theatre, Peterhof State Museum-Reserve, State Museum of Theatre and Music, State Russian Museum (all St Petersburg), Museum of Fine Arts (Komsomolsk-on-Amur).

© Museum of 20th–21st Century Art of St Petersburg, 2022