Pavel Petrovich Chistyakov

Pyotr Ivanovich Kotov (1889-1953), an Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR, full member of the Soviet Academy of Fine Arts, winner of the Stalin prize and a full professor, lived and worked in the late 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries - a time of historical and cultural seachange in Russia. He honestly and earnestly lived his life and became a true witness of his times, his work receiving numerous awards, and his pictures held at the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, and many galleries and museums across the former USSR. Historians and art scholars have differing opinions about the turn of the tide that happened in our homeland - but no one has the right to blame the artist for the fact that it befell him to have been born and have worked in so momentous an age.