Biography

Viktor Borisovich Surikov is a descendant of the ancient Cossack Surikov family, who, alongside Ermak, helped settle Siberia, moved to Transbaikalia, then to the Far East and the Amur River, and eventually settled in the Albazin fort. Viktor Borisovich Surikov was born on March 8, 1940, in the village of Sivaki in the Tygdinsky District of the Chita Region (now the Magdagachinsky District of the Amur Region) into a family of Cossack settlers. Viktor’s grandfather, parents, older brother, and he himself were repressed and sent into exile to Mogochi in the Chita Region. In the early 1950s, after their term of exile ended, the family moved to a new home in the Khabarovsk Krai, at the Obluchye station. From early childhood, Viktor was accustomed to hard physical labor. There was very little time left for games and children’s entertainment. But despite his harsh fate and difficult life, Viktor saw only beauty in everything. He loved his parents, his family, the people around him, and nature. He loved his homeland and marveled at the beauty of the Far Eastern taiga. As he communed with nature, he tried to capture that feeling on paper and canvas. Therefore, after completing the 7th grade, he enrolled in the Birobidzhan Art School. There were already six children in the family: besides Viktor, there were his two brothers—Yuri and Alexander—and three sisters—Lyudmila, Valentina, and Galina. His parents were unable to support Viktor, so he dropped out of school and moved to Blagoveshchensk, where he found work as a loader at a flour mill and remained there until he was drafted into the army. In his free time, he attended the studio of Pyotr Sergeyevich Evstafyev at the Amur Art Workshops. There he honed his brushwork skills. In 1959, Viktor met his future wife, Galina. According to her recollections, Viktor was a very modest young man; he never complained about the hardships of his life, never boasted about his successes, and even modestly kept quiet about his passion for painting and his classes at the studio. After being discharged from the army in 1963, Viktor decided to continue his education and enrolled in the Art and Pedagogical College in Vladivostok. That same year, his daughter Elena was born. In 1965, his son Boris was born. Viktor was a good student and a good friend. His home was always full of friends. Throughout his studies, Viktor served as class president. He disliked an idle lifestyle, never wasted time, and always tried to do everything quickly. If something caught his eye, he would be sure to capture it on paper, cardboard, or canvas. He always carried a folder with paper and a sharply sharpened pencil. Wherever he was—whether walking home from class, on his way to work, or strolling with his family in the park—he was always drawing something. On weekends, he would go out to paint from life in oils and watercolors. In 1968, he moved with his family to the city of Luchegorsk in the Primorsky Krai, where the All-Union Komsomol Youth Construction Project for the Primorskaya GRES power plant had just begun. Viktor continued his creative work; in his free time, he painted sketches and portraits of the construction workers, capturing the daily life of the Luchegorsk GRES construction site.

In 1970, he transferred to work at the Amur Art Workshops in Blagoveshchensk, where he also moved to live. In 1971, his daughter Natalia was born. Viktor worked tirelessly, studied his native region, and frequently went on creative trips to collective farms, state farms, and the northern districts of the Amur Region, painting portraits of top-performing workers, grain farmers, hunters, reindeer herders, and lumberjacks. The scope of his work is vast. In the early 1970s, he became fascinated with industrial themes. He made trips to major construction sites in our Amur Region. He brought back a series of works depicting the BAM construction industry. In his works, he captured the start of construction on the Zeya Hydroelectric Power Plant, the Raichikhinskaya Thermal Power Plant, the Luchegorskaya Thermal Power Plant, and the Bureyskaya Hydroelectric Power Plant. The last painting he was finishing before his death was “The Zeya Hydroelectric Power Plant Dam—Completion of Construction”; it is now housed at the Amur Regional Museum of Local History in Blagoveshchensk. Spring was Viktor’s favorite season, and he depicted it in his paintings, openly admiring and marveling at the reawakening of nature. The presence of people is felt not only in his landscapes but in all his paintings. Viktor worked prolifically in various genres of painting. He was the first artist in the Amur Region to begin painting in watercolor and to exhibit his watercolor works to the public. In 1981, he was admitted to the Union of Artists of the USSR. He became the first member of the Union of Artists of the USSR from the Amur Region—a native of the region who was born and worked his entire creative life in his native Amur land. In 1984, he had the opportunity to work at the “Academic Dacha” Creative Retreat of the Union of Artists of the USSR in Vyshny Volochek. While viewing the artists’ works, the head of the residency at the dacha—the artist and internationally renowned art historian and critic Vladimir Fyodorovich Tokarev—knelt before Surikov’s paintings and said: “Viktor! I bow down before your talent!” These words were later passed on to the Amur artists who worked at the “Academic Dacha” during subsequent residencies.

On April 25, 1985, Viktor passed away. He died young, at the age of 45, in the prime of his life and at the height of his creative powers, never knowing that in the 1990s his entire family—including himself—would be rehabilitated. Many people knew Viktor Surikov, not only in Blagoveshchensk and the Amur Region, but also beyond its borders. A huge crowd gathered for his funeral service. People put aside their daily affairs and came to say goodbye to him and accompany him on his final journey. Telegrams expressing grief and condolences began pouring into the Amur Union of Artists from all over. Such telegrams were sent from the artists’ unions in Moscow, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, Ulan-Ude, Krasnoyarsk, and many other cities. In the fall of 1985, the Amur branch of the Artists’ Union organized a posthumous exhibition of his works, which ran for an entire month and was visited by more than three thousand people. In 1986, the Amur Regional Museum of Local History organized a posthumous exhibition featuring most of his works, which are still housed in the museum today. In 1990, the museum organized a solo posthumous anniversary exhibition in honor of the 50th anniversary of his birth. In 2000, with the participation of the artist’s widow, the museum held an exhibition marking the 60th anniversary of Viktor’s birth. With the help of family members, such exhibitions are now held every five years—in 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, and 2025—under the title “Palette of the Soul.”

Works by Viktor Surikov have been acquired by art museums and art galleries These include institutions in Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk, Chita, Ulan-Ude, and Leningrad, as well as the Tretyakov Gallery and the Art Fund of the Russian Federation in Moscow; some are held in private collections and the artist’s family collection, while the rest have been entrusted to the Novikov-Daursky Amur Regional Museum of Local History in Blagoveshchensk.

We invite all art lovers to experience this high art.