Sergey Zakharov

Sergei Zakharov (Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky, Russian Empire, November 26, 1900 – Saint Petersburg, January 24, 1993) was a Soviet painter, watercolorist and interior designer, one of the leading figures of the Leningrad school and best known for his watercolors of flowers and fruit.

He was born on Sakhalin Island, where his father was doing military service at a hospital. The family moved to Novosibirsk in 1910, and after training at a technical school and at the Tomsk Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture, he graduated in 1927, the same year he began exhibiting. He then lived in Sverdlovsk and later in Leningrad, where he joined the Leningrad Union of Artists in 1938.

Between 1936 and 1955 he worked in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, together with his wife, the artist Maria Zubreeva, designing the interiors of public buildings. As a painter he worked mainly in watercolor and tempera, producing still lifes, landscapes, portraits and genre scenes, and he is regarded as an outstanding master of the medium. His works are held in the State Russian Museum and in collections in several countries.