Kurds Valentin Ivanovich (1905-1989)

The son of a country doctor, VI Kurds started painting as a teenager.
skills he first got in Perm and Yekaterinburg, engaged in private studios.

In 1923 he arrived in Petrograd, he entered the Faculty of Painting Vhuteina and graduated in 1926 In addition, he studied with K. Malevich in Ginhuke.

Simultaneously, under the direction of V. Lebedev Kurds began illustrating books for children and youth department of the State Literature Publishing House and is most clearly manifested itself precisely in this field.

The flowering of talent Kurdova came in the 1930s. He created a truly classic illustrations for books about animals - "what's what" V. Bianchi, "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" and "Tales" Rudyard Kipling and, finally, to the "Forest of the newspaper" V. Bianchi reprinted with these illustrations by more than twenty times. Kurds animal painter was not in the narrow sense of the word, the subject of his art has always provided the life of nature, which he was able to portray, combining a broad spatial scale with careful attention to detail.

But the chances of it were even wider, and he proved it, not less talented illustrating such different books like "The cavalry Budennogo" AI Vvedenskogo "Life Imteurgin Sr." T. Odulok and "Ivanhoe" by Sir Walter Scott.

During the war, the Kurds remained in the besieged Leningrad, made two trips - to the Volkhov front and to the guerrilla group, which gave him material for a series of lithographs "Roads of war" (1942-44).

After the war, he was unable to achieve the same high level of any of numerous heavy machine series (lithography, watercolor), nor in the illustrations, which were to blame for supremacy in the art of rigid dogmatic rules. Yet in recent years, he has managed to achieve success in the new version of illustrations for the Finnish epic "Kalevala" and "Tales" by R. Kipling.