Yaroslav Krestovsky

Krestovsky was born on 9 February 1925 in Leningrad in the family of sculptor Igor Krestovsky (1894–1976; see also: Портрет скульптора Игоря Крестовского), a professor of the Ilya Repin Institute. Yaroslav Krestovsky is a grandson of the famous Russian prose-writer Vsevolod Krestovsky (1840–1895), the author of the novel The Slums of Saint Petersburg (1864). From 1937 till 1941 Yaroslav studied at the Leningrad Secondary Art School of the All-Russian Academy of Arts. His teachers were Konstantyn Lepilov, Olga Bogaevskaya, Mikhail Natarevich. With the beginning of WWII, Yaroslav’s family was evacuated from Leningrad to Rostov the Great. After returning to Leningrad he enrolled the painting department of Vera Mukhina Higher School of Art and Design. In 1945 he lost an eye during a hunt. From 1948 till 1950 he worked as an artist-restorer at the State restoration workshop. In 1956 he graduated from Ilya Repin Institute, studying with Mikhail Bobyshov workshop.