Yury Antonovich Zaitsev

Yury Antonovich Zaitsev was a painter, an honored artist of the Chuvash Republic. One of the founders of Chuvash art. He was born in the village of Irkh-Sirmy-Koshki in the Mariinsko-Posadsky District of the Chuvash Republic. From the age of fourteen he worked as an assistant to an icon painter. In 1912 he moved to Moscow, where he attended private art studios. In 1914 Zaitsev went to Saint Petersburg, where he worked with the monumental artist F. R. Ralyan, who oversaw the decoration of the cathedral of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. In 1914–1915 Zaitsev carried out art commissions in Rostov-on-Don and Baku. He served in the Red Army: he worked in the drafting office and managed the regimental club.

In 1928 Zaitsev returned to Cheboksary and for several years worked as a photojournalist for the magazine 'Suntal' ('Nakovalnya' — 'The Anvil'). He took part in a government expedition that studied the culture and everyday life of Chuvash villages. In 1936 Zaitsev made a creative trip to Kazakhstan with a group of Chuvash writers and produced a series of works titled 'Pribalkhashstroy'.

In 1945 Zaitsev was subjected to repression by the NKVD, but in 1958 he was rehabilitated and reinstated in the Union of Artists. Yury Antonovich Zaitsev died on 25 December 1972. One of the streets in Cheboksary is named in his honor.