Mikhail Chapiro (also Shapiro; ; born 1938) is an artist of
Russian Jewish
The history of the Jews in Russia and areas historically connected with it goes back at least 1,500 years. Jews in Russia have historically constituted a large religious and ethnic diaspora; the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest po ...
origin currently living and working in
Montreal, Quebec
Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...
, Canada.
Biography
Chapiro was born in the city of
Novozybkov
Novozybkov (; ) is a historical town in Bryansk Oblast, Russia with a population, in 2021, of 38,680.
The city is home to a branch of the Bryansk State University.
History
It was founded in 1701 and was granted town status in 1809.
Novozybkov ...
, near
Belarus
Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...
, in 1938. Soon thereafter his family moved to the nearby city of
Gomel
Gomel (, ) or Homyel (, ) is a city in south-eastern Belarus. It serves as the administrative centre of Gomel Region and Gomel District, though it is administratively separated from the district. As of 2025, it is the List of cities and largest ...
, Belarus, where Chapiro spent most of his childhood. During the German occupation of the western part of USSR (1941-1943) Chapiro's family was evacuated to the eastern part of Russia.
Since his early childhood, Chapiro was captivated by painting. Thanks to his teachers,
Peter Chernyshevsky and
Boris Zvenigorodsky, the artists of great experience and talent, this endowment became his predilection, the raison d'être of his life. After 6 years of studies, he graduated from the Mukhina Institute of Arts and Industrial Design in
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...
(now
Saint Petersburg Art and Industry Academy
The Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design (; abbreviated as СПГХПА) is the oldest school of design in Russia. It occupies a parcel of land immediately to the east of the Summer Garden in Saint Petersburg.
History
...
).
After graduation, he was sent for obligatory work (as was practiced in the USSR) to the capital of Siberia, the city of
Novosibirsk
Novosibirsk is the largest city and administrative centre of Novosibirsk Oblast and the Siberian Federal District in Russia. As of the 2021 Russian census, 2021 census, it had a population of 1,633,595, making it the most populous city in Siber ...
, where he spent 7 years working for the government as a stylist, and in his free time, at nights, working on his paintings.
In 1974 Chapiro left Novosibirsk and moved to Moscow, where he joined the Russia's underground
avant-garde
In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...
movement and regularly exhibited his works at the avant-garde center at Malaya Gruzinskaya 28, which in 1981 became the home of his solo exhibition. Like all underground artists, he was prosecuted by the Soviet regime. However, he was recognized by Russian intellectual elite, by scientists, especially physicists, by sportsmen, poets, musicians and artists. Only with
Perestroyka
''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...
he was recognized by a wider public. From 1988 to 1990 his paintings were exhibited at the Moscow Modern Art Gallery MARS.
Chapiro immigrated to Canada from Russia in 1992.
The themes of his paintings are portraits, landscapes, cityscapes, animals, flowers, and abstract works. The manner of Chapiro's paintings is a mixture of
realism
Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to:
In the arts
*Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts
Arts movements related to realism include:
*American Realism
*Classical Realism
*Liter ...
and
abstraction
Abstraction is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from the use and classifying of specific examples, literal (reality, real or Abstract and concrete, concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
"An abstraction" ...
. Chapiro paints mainly in
oil on canvas
Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or copper for several centuries. ...
. He is an author of portraits of Soviet physicists, such as
Andrey Sakharov
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet physicist and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing human rights around the world.
Although he spent his career in physics in the ...
,
Lev Landau
Lev Davidovich Landau (; 22 January 1908 – 1 April 1968) was a Soviet physicist who made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics. He was considered as one of the last scientists who were universally well-versed and ma ...
,
Evgeny Lifshitz
Evgeny Mikhailovich Lifshitz (; ; 21 February 1915 – 29 October 1985) was a leading Soviet physicist and brother of the physicist Ilya Lifshitz.
Work
Born into a Ukrainian Jewish family in Kharkov, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire (now K ...
,
Mikhail Leontovich,
Igor Tamm
Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (; 8 July 1895 – 12 April 1971) was a Soviet Union, Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Ilya Mikhailovich Frank, for their 1934 discovery and demon ...
,
Lev Artsimovich
Lev Andreyevich Artsimovich ( Russian: Лев Андреевич Арцимович, February 25, 1909 – March 1, 1973), also transliterated Arzimowitsch, was a Soviet physicist known for his contributions to the Tokamak— a device that produ ...
,
Abram Ioffe
Abram Fedorovich Ioffe ( rus, Абра́м Фёдорович Ио́ффе, p=ɐˈbram ˈfʲɵdərəvʲɪtɕ ɪˈofɛ; – 14 October 1960) was a prominent Soviet Union, Soviet physicist. He received the USSR State Prize, Stalin Prize (1942), the ...
. He is an author of a portrait of Russian ballerina
Maya Plisetskaya
Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya (; 20 November 1925 – 2 May 2015) was a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress. In post-Soviet times, she held both Lithuanian and Spanish citizenship. . The painting is currently owned by
St. Petersburg Museum for Theatre Arts. The portrait of Soviet composer
Dmitry Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his First Symphony in 1926 and thereafter was regarded as a major composer.
Shostak ...
by Chapiro was exhibited at various exhibitions in
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
and
New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
. Chapiro's works represented at the
Museum of Russian Art in New York. His personal exhibitions are regularly held in Montreal. His recent exhibition at Galerie Michel-Ange, Montreal, Canada, has included 15 portraits of most famous artists of 19th and 20th centuries, such as
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, ; ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of Impressionism painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his ...
,
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...
,
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...
,
and others.
References
* Mikhail Chapiro. Paintings. Catalogue. Editor: Violetta Safarova. Montreal, Canada, 2001,
* Who is Mikhail Chapiro? An iconographer or an iconoclast? Nick Patchev, Preview to Chapiro's Catalogue, 2001, Montreal, Canada
* Portraits-Encounters. By I.Lapina. Series of publications in Canadian newspaper: Meeting Place - Montreal, 2001, No 9 through No 12 (86)
* I0088,S22 CHAPIRO, Mikhael - INVENTAIRE D’ARCHIVES Le Congrès juif canadien, Comité des charités, archives nationales
External links
Previous reference in Russianxpertnetinc.comList of Chapiro's past exhibitionsInterview with Mikhail Chapiro at the Canadian TV channel RTVCGalerie Michel-Ange, Montreal, Canada, exposition of Chapiro's paintings
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chapiro, Mikhail
1938 births
Living people
Russian painters
Russian male painters
Jewish painters
Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design alumni