Valeri B. Skuridin

Valeri B. Skuridin
1917-1983

Valeri Skuridin was born into a noble family in the city of Orel in 1917. From an early age, he showed artistic ability and studied in the Orlovski Art School. At the age of 16 he went to Moscow and enrolled in the Art Institute in Memory of the 1905 Revolution, where he studied under the professor N. P. Krymov. He graduated from the Institute in 1938. In 1938, he enrolled in the Leningrad Academy of Art. In the fall of 1941, during his third year of study, he was drafted into the army. He experienced all the difficulties of the Leningrad Blockade and suffering from exhaustion, was sent to Ladoga in the winter of 1942. After recovering in the hospital, he was again sent into combat. He served as a private in the 33rd division of the Army at the Belorussian front, spent time in combat throughout Europe, and was in Berlin at the conclusion of the war. He was awarded the Red Star Medal and the Award of Freedom. In 1945, having returned to his homeland, he commenced his studies enrolling in the third year course at the prestigious Surikov Institute where his teachers included O. M. Osmerkin and K. F. Yuon. Skuridin graduated with honors from the Surikov Institute in 1949 and on the strength of his final coursework project, he was accepted as a member of MOSSKh artist guild. He then became a graduate student in the studio of professor I. I. Kotov. In 1953, having defended his dissertation of the work "Radischev on his journey from Petersburg to Moscow" he received an academic scholarship as a doctoral candidate. As a graduate student, he first began teaching at the Institute, and then became a docent, then a Professor in the department of painting, and finally a rector at the Surikov Institute. He died in 1983.