Nechitailo, Vasili

1915 - 1980

Vasili Nechitailo was born in a Nikolaevskoe, a village in the Rostov region. He studied at the Krasnodar Art Tekhnikum from 1931 to 1935. He then attended the Moscow Art Institute for an additional five years. In 1942, he enrolled in their graduate program. Nechitailo was evacuated to Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in 1943, along with eleven other academically accomplished artists, for the duration of the war. After graduating from the Moscow Art Institute graduate program in 1944, Nechitailo began to teach at the Surikov Institute. He began to actively exhibit in 1945, and continued to teach until 1956.

In 1965, Nechitailo was awarded the People's Merited Artist of the Soviet Union. He received the State Award of Repin twice. Nechitailo painted numerous portraits of farmers, as well as farm scenes and villages. He painted many Russian scenes, and he also painted abroad, managing to visit Bulgaria, China, Italy and Spain. Numerous collections throughout Russia include Nechitailo's work, such as the State Russian Museum, the Kiev Museum of Russian Art, the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis and the Museum of Fine Arts in Volgograd.

•Member-correspondent of the Soviet Association of Artists, 1972

•Silver Medal of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, 1965

•The Repin Prize, 1971

•The State Prize, 1971

•Titled "People's Artist of Russia", 1965

Exhibitions: (partial list)  1946-47, 49, 51 & 55, All-Union Art Exhibition, Moscow 1960, "Soviet Russia", Moscow 1964, Solo exhibit, Moscow 1982, Solo exhibit, Moscow 2003, "The Road to Russian Impressionism", Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia 2003-2004, "In the Russian Tradition" Smithsonian Institution, his work Nude, Masha was included in the show.

He is listed on page 220 of Matthew Bown's, A Dictionary of Twentieth Century Russian and Soviet Painters.