Yuri Petrovich Dyakov (1929–2008)

Yuri Petrovich Dyakov was born on December 31, 1929, in the small town of Kotovsk near Tambov in the Voronezh region of Russia. At a young age he was impressed with the beauty of nature around him, and this early inspiration determined his career as a landscape artist.

In 1945 and 1946, Dyakov attended an art club headed by Konstantine Petrov, from whom he acquired a basic knowledge of drawing and composition. On Petrov’s recommendation, he studied in Tambov under Nikolai Otnyakin from 1947 to 1949 and later entered the Art-Pedagogical College named for Savintsky in Penza, graduating in 1954.

After teaching drawing, he moved to Voronezh in 1958 and taught drawing and painting at the Suvorov Military College while participating in exhibitions throughout the Soviet Union. He was admitted to the Artists’ Union in 1967, received a diploma from the Artists’ Union in 1995, and died in Voronezh on May 10, 2008.