Mikhail Ivanov

Russian artist, icon painter, art critic and writer Mikhail Ivanov was born in 1944 in Leningrad and studied consecutively at the Soviet Academy of Arts’ Secondary Art School and the School of Art History of the Repin Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Since 1975, Ivanov was involved in the unofficial Leningrad art movement, publishing his critical essays in samizdat underground press. During the years of Perestroika, he was among the founders of the St. Petersburg Institute of Theology and Philosophy where he taught a course on world art symbolism. The artist died in St. Petersburg in 2023.

Mikhail Ivanov worked with a limited number of subjects, and certain distinctive features make his pictures instantly recognisable. His landscapes and still lifes are pointedly simplified and stylised.