Alexander Volkov

Alexander Nikolaevich Volkov was born on 31 August 1886 (19 August in the old style) in New Margelan, later called Skobelev and now Fergana, in the family of a garrison doctor. He grew up in Turkestan and finished the Orenburg Cadet Corps in 1905.

He entered St Petersburg University but left it after a few years for painting, working in the studio of the watercolourist D. Bortniker, then in 1908–1910 in V. Makovsky's class at the Higher Art School of the Academy of Arts, and in 1910–1911 at M. Bernstein's private school, where Nicholas Roerich, Ivan Bilibin and Leonid Sherwood taught. From 1912 to 1916 he studied at the Kyiv Art School under F. Krichevsky and V. Menk.

From 1916 Volkov lived in Central Asia, mostly in Tashkent. In 1919 he became director of the State Museum of Arts of Central Asia and taught at the Turkestan art workshops (1919–1921); in 1922 he headed the Theatre of Proletarian Culture. In 1921–1923 he travelled to Bukhara, Khiva and Samarkand and took part in designing and making military badges for the Bukharan and Khorezm People's Soviet Republics. From 1929 to 1946 he taught at the Tashkent art college.

His best-known canvases date from these years: Caravan (Arrival) (1922–1923), The Pomegranate Tea House (1924) and Girls with Cotton (1932), all three held by the Tretyakov Gallery. He belonged to the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR) from 1927, joined the society Masters of the New East in 1929, and in 1931–1932 formed the art group known as Volkov's Brigade. After a Moscow exhibition in 1934 the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum bought several of his works. From the mid-1930s his painting was criticised as formalist.

During the war Volkov designed posters for TASS (1941–1946). He was named Honoured Art Worker of the Uzbek SSR in 1941 and People's Painter of the Uzbek SSR in 1946. Solo exhibitions were held in 1943, 1944–1945 and 1957. He died in Tashkent on 17 December 1957.

Volkov is regarded as one of the founders of modern art in Central Asia. His paintings are held by the Tretyakov Gallery and other museums, and have sold at international auctions for hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars.