Oleg Ogurtsov

Member of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts,

Member of Union of Artist of Russia.

Oleg Ogurtsov was born in a worker’s family in a Russian town Bryansk in 1933 year. During the Second World War he lived in a small town Sevsk, occupied by German’s army. There he met a russian soldier prisoner, later shot by germans, “uncle Seriogha”, who gave him a gift – his first box of a water colours, and taught him to draw.

So, the boy “fell in love” with the drawing and after the war started his art education in the art college in Elets. In 1955 he became a student of the Russian Academy of Fine Arts in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). He graduated in the workshop of famous Russian painter Boris Ugarov.

From 1966 he lives, with his wife, well-knowing russian artist Albina Akritas, in a small town Selyatino in Moscow’s suburb.

Oleg Ogurtsov is a pure representative of the сlassic russian painting school. His creativity is based on a colour’s harmony, truth and the simplicity of expression. He never works indoor, in a studio, but prefers to paint in the nature, feeling the “unity” with the landscape, transmit it through his individuality.

He spends his lifetime in harmony, walking through the woods and fields, painting his favorite landscapes, thinking about the life and the nature.

“I often feel a sudden sadness and pain when I am working on a landscape, as if I see it for the last time. Not because the leaves will fall from the trees, and the flowers will wither away. Not that. But there comes the wrench that possibly in a day or a two this beauty will cease to exist, will be either burnt or destroyed. Destroyed by us of course, for the environment has already suffered enough from physical damage or pollution. My works are meant to remind people of that, to show what wonderful things we might be going to ruin.

Can all the achievements of our civilization be bought at such a price? It is bitterly sad to think that the next generations will learning about the Earth’s beauty only from our paintings.”

Oleg Ogurtsov’s works is in the russian and foreign private collections.