Boris Schukin
People’s Artist of the USSR, the USSR State Prize Laureate Boris Vasilyevich Schukin was born on 18 April 1894 in Kashir, Tulskaya province, in the family of a civil employee.During the war (1914-1918) he studied at the Alexander Military School.In 1920 entered Vakhtangov’s Studio.He worked at the Vakhtangov Theatre from 1920 till 1939.He also taught at the Vakhtangov Theatre School.The Vakhtangov Theatre School was renamed after him, and Bolshoy Levshinsky Lane in Moscow, a street where he lived, was renamed to Schukin Street.His artistic life was greatly influenced by his teacher’s aesthetics with its vivid theatricality, irony and its affinity to folk buffoonery and grotesque.B.V. Schukin was one the most eminent representatives of the Soviet realistic school, he was an artist, who managed to combine comedy and drama brilliantly in his artistic work.Boris Vasilyevich Schukin died on 7 October 1939.The death interrupted his work upon parts of the Mayor (“The Government Inspector”) and Kutuzov (“Field-Marshal Kutuzov”).
