ALEKSANDR
MIKHAILOVICH     
GERASIMOV 
(1881-1963)

The first President of Academy of Arts of the USSR, four in a row Stalin Prize winner. Being a pupil of Abraham Arkhipov, Konstantin Korovin and Valentine Serov, an admirer of Ilya Repin's style, Gerasimov created a number of sound examples of Russian impressionism in various genres. However, the artist is better known as an inventor of  Socialist Realism as we know it.