Punin, Nikolay

Date born: 1888

Place Born: Helsingfors

Date died: 1953

Place died: Abez Camp, near Vorkuta

Critic, theorist, museum official, and historian of Russian art. Punin studied history at St. Petersburg University. He worked in the Department of Old Russian Painting at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, where he edited the arts articles in several publications, including Severnyye zapiski, and Russkaia ikuna. Punin was one of the first scholars to publish theories on Old Russian painting, serving as the director of the Fine Arts Department of an organization called Narkompros, from 1928-1921. He was appointed commissar at the Hermitage, Svomas, and Russian Museums. Between 1936 and 1921, Punin lectured on the contemporary Western European art at the Institute of Art History. He published articles and monographs on both contemporary and 19^th century Russian artists, including Vladamir Tatlin, Pavel Kuznetsov, and Pavel Fedotov. Punin�s research combined historical and stylistic analysis. He was appointed professor of art history at the All-Russian art academy in 1932, and was a professor at Leningrad University from 1944-49, when he died in a concentration camp near the Arctic Circle. LMW

Home Country: Russia

Sources: The Dictionary of Art

Bibliography: