Nikolai Remisov
1887–1975 · Russian-American caricaturist and film art director
Nikolai Vladimirovich Remizov, also known as Nicolai Remisoff, was a Russian-American artist born in Saint Petersburg in 1887 and died in Riverside County in 1975. He matters for two less common careers: political caricature and art direction in American cinema. Before the 1917 Revolution he was the leading artist of the Russian satirical magazines Strekoza and Satirikon, where he signed his cartoons with the pseudonym Re-Mi.
In the United States he worked as an art director on many films, several of them directed by his fellow Russian Gregory Ratoff. His credits include Of Mice and Men (1939), The Moon Is Blue (1953), Pork Chop Hill (1959) and Ocean's 11 (1960). Film brought him wider recognition, while his pre-1917 cartoons remain the work most directly tied to caricature.