Cartoonist, drawer, painter, theatre artist

He was born ещ the family of the Mariinsky Theater decorator in St. Petersburg. He was engaged in drawing and painting in the private studio of VE Savinsky, the workshop of PP Chistyakov in Tsarskoe Selo. At the beginning of the 1910s, he visited the “New Artistic Studio”, which was headed by Kustodiev, Lansere, Dobuzhinsky. In 1913 he entered the Higher Art School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture by Imperior Art Academy. First, he studied at the architectural department, then from 1915 on the painting department of Kardovsky. He graduated in 1922. In 1918-1920 worked as a teacher in an art studio for workers. Taught mathematics to the sailors of the Baltic Fleet for some time.
Since 1918 he participated in exhibitions. He was a member of the “Mir iskusstva” community, “Communities of Artists”, the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia. In the 1920s he worked in the field of satirical graphics a lot, collaborated with the magazines “Chizh”, “Yozh”, “Behemoth”, “Smehach”, “Crocodile”. Created a series of graphic works “Nepmen” (1928-1932), The “Zapad” (1932-1934), “Obnazhennye naturschicy” (1930).
He started to teach at the Graphics department VHUTEIN in Leningrad in 1929.
During 1930s he was working in the children’s department of Gosizdat. He made a series of illustrations for the works of Eugenг Onegin by A. S. Pushkin (1934), Nana by Emile Zola (1935-1937) Dear Friend by G. de Maupassant (1935-1937) The Nutcracker by Hoffmann (1937), Anna Karenina (1942-1945) and War and Peace (1941-1948) by Tolstoy, and many others.
In 1938-1940 he worked in the Experimental lithographic workshop LOSSH. During 1940s he turned to the theatre and decorative arts, created costume sketches for the productions “Woe from Wit” by Griboedov at the Leningrad Academic Drama Theater named after Pushkin (1940-1941), “The Wedding” A. P. Chehova (1942) and “Much Ado About Nothing” by William Shakespeare (1943, not performed) for the Leningrad Variety Theater.
He was buried in St. Petersburg in the Literatorskye Mostki.